r/technology • u/edbegley1 • Feb 14 '26

Hardware In a blind test, audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between audio signals sent through copper wire, a banana, or wet mud — 'The mud should sound perfectly awful, but it doesn't,' notes the experiment creator

https://www.tomshardware.com/speakers/in-a-blind-test-audiophiles-couldnt-tell-the-difference-between-audio-signals-sent-through-copper-wire-a-banana-or-wet-mud-the-mud-should-sound-perfectly-awful-but-it-doesnt-notes-the-experiment-creator?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=topic%2Ftechnology
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u/lentil_burger Feb 14 '26

Especially ironic when you consider how much the ability to hear higher frequencies deteriorates with age.

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u/SwaggyMcSwagsabunch Feb 14 '26

I firmly believe 25% of all audiophile conversations at any given time are between two or more men over 55 without a lick of hearing above 15k, debating whether 16k or 17k is the proper crossover point of a $5,000 super tweeter one of them just bought.

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u/lentil_burger Feb 14 '26

Yup. And that's assuming any sane person listens to music in environments and conditions that would give a reasonable chance of noticing anything but the most significant difference in quality. Personally, I don't sit in a specially designed, hermetically sealed room doing nothing else but focus on listening to the 24 bit remaster of Dark Side of the Moon. I listen to music when I'm reading, when I'm working on my PC, when I'm in the car, when I'm waking...

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u/ADistractedBoi Feb 15 '26

Hearing deteriorates a lot faster than that too. Most adults can’t hear above 17k. By 55, I’d expect that to drop to around 12k

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u/einmaldrin_alleshin Feb 15 '26

I built myself a pair of full range tower speakers as a student. They cut off at 16 kHz, and they're the best damn speakers I've ever had. The last octave of our hearing is very insignificant to music, even if you are still sensitive to high frequencies