I’m a convert after years of digital cable improvement denial

You did read past the title, to gain an understanding of what the title means in the context of the article. Right ?

The article makes the case for why expensive HDMI cables will not produce better picture quality compared to cheaper HDMI cables that are adequately spec'd (used within their spec'd parameters).

The article describes how HDMI works, and what type of image artifacts, if any, is likely to occur if an HDMI cable is changing the image.

What exactly do you dispute in the article?

 

More info:

Expensive HDMI cables make no difference and here's why

Expensive HDMI cables make no difference and here's why

 

I did not go past the title because such lie in the title is too ominous to ignore. All HDMI cables ARE NOT the same just because of the different versions and changes made over the years to the specs. I have actually edited my post since and you must have taken your time squeezing this reply.

 

the testing section of Expensive HDMI cables make no difference and here's why is really good- they took uncompressed captures and then used a screengrabber to extract the same sets of frames transmitted over 2 different cables and compared hashes, THAT's how you find differences down to the single-pixel/single frame level.
also I think ugly has me on his ignore list so someone else point out the date on that "All HDMI are the same" article please

 

Okay this thread has turned into a salt mine.
Good luck and goodbye.

 

This is futile, when I said I am looking for an Audiophile Ethernet switch I mean it, it's not BS. When I wanted to see whether HDMI cables made a difference I didn't take your word or the people who praise $1K cables, I went and tested myself and I already told you what my experience was in a prior post.

If you are happy to use $5 cables from Amazon it's fine with me I don't have a problem with it. You can post all the links you want but when it comes to making purchases I am a hands on person and while I might read other people's experiences I make my decisions based on my own hands on experiences and those are:

Analogue cables make a lot of differences.
Quality digital cables make a difference.
Power conditioners and power cords make a difference.
Isolation of components make a difference.

Feel free to dispute that, it won't make any difference, I make my choices to please me, not your beliefs. It's a shame you deny yourself the opportunity to have better results but you might not be able to notice differences so there is no point spending in good stuff and your choice of $5 cables might be the right one.

 

Don't worry, very few people have made it to my ignore list. There is a reason I don't need to read that link and it is because, cables make a difference! Whether it is worth it for you or I can be debatable. But any claim that cables don't make a difference is treated with the same contempt the "witnesses" knocking on my door get when they are trying to save me.

 

LOL.

So instead of just being able to admit there is no basis for the OP's claims, you resort to the most ludicrous possible interpretation of an article's title, in order to avoid reading it to find out how you are wrong.

Of course the arguments in that article are perfectly relevant now, as any HDMI cable works on essentially the same digital theory. As explained in the other article I posted.

Only when one side renders it so, by making unsupported claims and refusing to acknowledge any counter evidence. Yeah, then things get futile. (Though perhaps not for others watching who may be wondering about the issue).

Yes, it's clear that any attempt to educate about how HDMI cables work won't make a difference for some people. Again, all fine if you believe whatever you want to believe and stay in that bubble. But when you produce bad arguments for what you believe, or to defend someone else's unjustified claim, as you have yet again in this thread, that's when some of us will simply point out "uh, no, that's not true actually, and here's why..."

Because good, more accurate information about how things work is actually valuable for members who want to make informed choices in how they spend their money. So when someone makes a post suggesting people should spend hundreds of dollars on high end HDMI cables to improve sound/picture, it's worth pointing out why that isn't the case.

 

As I told you, be happy with your $5 cables, I have no problem with that, I approve. If you like they are just as good as Cinnamon, chocolate, coffee or any fruit salad flavor AQ decides to name them. Be happy with them.

 

HDMI cables are a crap shoot.

From a consumer standpoint, it's really frustrating to try to sort out HDMI cables. In 2018 we remodeled our TV room, and I put together a fairly standard home theater setup that includes an Oppo UDP-203 Blu-ray player, a Roku Ultra and an Onkyo TX-RZ810 surround receiver, with a 65" LG OLED (LG OLED65B7A).

Everything runs through the Onkyo, which outputs via HDMI to a wall jack immediately behind the cabinet, then over about 20' of in-wall HDMI cable (that was purportedly 4K compatible) that terminates in a jack in the ceiling behind the TV set. Initially I was using Monoprice active HDMI cables from the devices to the Onkyo and from the ceiling jack to the TV. It worked well for 4K HDR content, although I would have problems when trying to play standard def DVDs on the Oppo that would involve some settings calisthenics with the remote to fix (and that I've never bothered to fully track down, since I rarely play physical media).

This past year I decided to switch to the current model Apple TV. Dolby Vision hated my setup. Long story short: the in-wall cable I put in place only a few years ago is useless for 4K Dolby Vision.

I ended up replacing all of the inter-box cabling in the cabinet to upgraded (passive) HDMI 2.0 cables. When it came to replacing the in-wall cable, it took me several tries over a few weeks before I found a long "8K high speed" amplified HDMI cable that works reliably with Dolby Vision in my setup (specifically the Monoprice 8K SlimRun amplified cable)...and that's only if I go directly from the receiver HDMI output to the TV; as a test before I pull any more cable through the wall, I bought a couple of HDMI keyjacks from Amazon and used them to connect a shorter 8K cable to the long 8K cable (to simulate going from the receiver in the cabinet to the wall jack). No dice! The signal kept dropping. I wouldn't think that a simple physical connection like that would mess things up.

So for now I've got a very expensive HDMI cable snaking out of the back of my equipment cabinet and strung along the floor (hidden behind the cabinet and a subwoofer and a potted plant) and up the side of the fireplace where it meets the wall (with some strategically placed tape) and across the black marble mantlepiece (sort-of hidden behind some knick knacks and the center channel speaker) and then up to the TV. You can see it from the couch if you squint. It works for now until I can figure out a clean setup that works...

It's really aggravating I can't find cables that'll play nice together - it shouldn't be that hard to pull off!

 

Would placing the Apple TV next to the TV and using the ARC output of the TV to feed the receiver through the HDMI cable in the wall work for you?

 

Believe me, I empathize!

I put together a complex home theater quite a while ago which entails long runs of HDMI, so I had to do a lot of investigation to make sure the specs were right. That worked fine for the "before 4K years" but the challenges of passing 4K HDR especially over longer distances has driven lots of people crazy. In one set up someone would claim "X cable worked fine" in another person's it wouldn't work (so many variables in how different sources and devices play with one another, handshakes etc). I'm still trouble shooting!

 

Have you found any HDMI keyjacks that work reliably? These are just a physical connection; it's hard to believe that putting two different lengths of amplified 8K HDMI cable together (from the same manufacturer) would cause the signal to drop (unless the combined length of the two cables is messing things up, but this shouldn't be the case here)...

 

No, but I haven't tried. Up until 4K my original Blue Jeans HDMI cables, long runs, worked perfectly. Then trying to follow all the testing of 4KHDR-ready cables was head spinning.
(I use a 4K capable projector). Eventually I bought a RUIPRO 50’ HDMI fiber cable, which reports had as being "the one" to solve long cable run issues. But it has proven flaky in my set up, and I need a reliable solution before I start re-running new cable through my ceilings and walls. I talked with a pro home installation company who suggested they'd get it done with something like CAT6 (IIRC), but with the pandemic I haven't been able to follow up on getting that work done.

 

for something like that i'd just punt on hdmi entirely and use baluns for the long runs. hdmi issues increase with the square of cable length it feels like sometimes . That's how we handled all the long HDMI runs at ILM/Sky Sound while I was there anyway.

 

the thing with baluns is you're trading data transmission problems for hdcp handshake issues- you need to make sure your transmitting and receiving devices work with the baluns you choose

 

It is very peculiar how so many people seem to think everyone should have the same hyper acute hearing. When they would never for a second think everyone has the same acuteness of eyesight. And when it is well known that only some few individuals have perfect pitch, perfect timing, etc

 

Hmmm...or, we could go and spend $60 on REAL chocolate, which would taste better than the Audioquest cable...

 

They are marketing and materials science experts over there.

 

Mmmmmm. Again it is not my area of specialization, but I understand enough to say that while yes those a high frequency RF signals being sent it is NOT analog audio. The systems are set up to recover that RF 1s and 0s. So the concept may be flawed but I would not agree "totally" flawed.
- Come to think of it, I've never heard from/read of a digital signal transmission designer saying better cables would make the data "better" (transmission failures excluded, and excluding also stuff like CD interpolation. (IIRC the interpolation happens right inside the transport? Before transmission out any cable???????))
- Now, those "1s and 0s" are likely processed by transistors, which are NOT on/off devices as many think, but are actually more probabilistic as they get smaller and smaller.
- Then we have to consider...THE BEATLES because nobody has mentioned that so far...

 

Human hearing is notoriously fallible. That is NOT in dispute. Hence, what anyone hears is NOT hard scientific evidence, sorry. Likewise human vision can be fooled. And both are subject to mood and migraines and expectation bias.
- If there are differences in the video picture, they should be reproducible in a live picture and/or test patterns. Do you have the old cable to try it? Could you please? Because, well, why not?!?
- Note I am not trying to be mean or snide so do not take it that way. But I am very curious about this. As an engineer who now also teaches science, I look for scientific evidence which means eliminating all but one variable. And hearing makes too many variables. Heh, all those years ago I should have taken pictures before/after putting the Monster filter on my rear projector. But digital cameras were not much of a thing yet so it never occurred to me.

 

The problem is that if you suffer buyer's remorse on both of them, with one you are likely to get a refund. A request for a refund for the other one might get you banned from the store.

 

Yes, but we don't always know how to measure it. For instance soundstage improvement-surely there is a physical change yet likely requiring a much more sophisticated apparatus than anyone will get around to building., which could distill the impinging soundfield into a massive amount of vectors.
- On the other hand, that statement I just made is often used as an excuse in my opinion.

Hearing has I'd say three aspects:
(1) The physical vibrations impinging on your ear/eye
(2) How your eardrum/retina turns those vibrations into neural signals
(3) How your brain processes those signals.
It is #3 that is troublesome. Since cables changes are always sighted, there is a possibility that even if 1 & 2 are exactly the same, it is possible your BRAIN will process the signal differently because it expects something better. That is expectation bias. The cable change is one variable, the hearing is another, and for a true scientific test you cannot change two variables.* Blind testing, or recording something like a TV screenshot, are the only ways around that.

*most "scientific studies" are not this pure, especially medical and education. There's a lot of statistical technique to try and make correlations, however the results always have a grain of salt unless reproducible on a very large scale.

 

I agree and wanted to say something to this effect a few hours ago, but only up to the apparatus part.

I wonder what measurements Bob Carver took of his sonic holographer results from way back when.

 

It's a very real statement, there are things you just can't measure and apparent good measurements aren't equal to good sound.

You could then try to explain me -please, without saying I am imaging things- how from several HDMI cables I've tried -for sound purposes only- the one that was much more expensive -than the one I bought- I didn't like. Is that expectation bias? I was certainly open minded but it resulted in a no, no without even taking into consideration the price.