[mikeash]

My comment is really about audiophile equipment. I say that audiophiles can't tell the difference with much equipment in blind tests, because nobody can, because it makes no difference. There are plenty of other examples out there of crazy high-end digital cables like the two examples I showed. People do buy them. I was intentionally vague with the word "much", only meaning to point out that there's a lot of this stuff out there, not make any quantitative statement about just how much.

As for your goal of building a better stereo system, I'd say your best bet is to avoid any community that self-describes as "audiophile". I imagine you know enough about audio to know what makes sense and what doesn't, so see how people evaluate stuff and go for the people who use sane benchmarks. Avoid anybody who talks about stuff being "warm" or similar, especially in the context of changing digital components, and look for people who provide measurement of sensible numbers.

[davidcuddeback]

You still seem to be hung up on digital. Digital is only a small segment of audio equipment.

> I say that audiophiles can't tell the difference with much equipment in blind tests, because nobody can, because it makes no difference.

That only holds true for digital equipment, but not for analog. If that's your definition of audiophile equipment, then your position makes sense. But that doesn't fit my definition of audiophile equipment, and I think a lot of audiophiles would disagree, too.

> As for your goal of building a better stereo system, I'd say your best bet is to avoid any community that self-describes as "audiophile".

I appreciate you're advice. I mean no offense by this, but I'm going to pass. I'm just not going to avoid an entire group of people because some guy on the internet (who I've never met) has some unsubstantiated claims about that group of people.