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Comment by acje | Hacker News Reader

I think electrical engineers having done some RF designs generally regard audiophiles as flat-earthers explaining what is wrong with a flat map; they might get it right now and then, but always for the wrong reasons. Remember how in the 90ties you could hear an SMS coming to a phone near an audio device? Right! No physical connection and sure you can’t hear the 900mhz ish gsm signal, but the rectified and smoothed signal had an audible time division multiplexing (envelope). And the carrier wave often resonated with paths in the signaling path of the audio device.

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The keywords are: EMI (electromagnetic interference), signal integrity, power integrity.

Memcpy can have second order effects due to EMI radiated by CPU, motherboard or coupled via power fluctuations.

There are audible and measurable effects of audio system clock jitter which in turn depends on oscillator power quality.

Someone mentioned that ethernet has isolation transformers. But isolation transformers have parasitic common mode coupling which can inject the noise to ground plane if interference is strong and device is susceptible enough

Watch the EEVBLOG on company which designed scope capable of measuring 1kV common mode signals. (present in EV electronics) https://youtu.be/I7ppDNLlEL4

Audiophile stuff is a weird mix of real effects and snake oil.

This, so much this. Many people ignore most of the things affecting sound quality in their setup. Audiophiles don’t, and they often go the extra mile to satisfy their compulsion for better sound—up to and including psychoacoustics.

If a $10,000 power cable makes your amp sound better to you, who’s to say it doesn’t?

the aunt of a friend promised sick people to talk to angels about their issues for only a modest sum. i'm sure those people felt at least a bit better afterwards, because they were of options otherwise.

on the other hand, they spent hundreds of dollars for nothing and if they eventually recovered they'd tell other sufferers about it, dragging them down too.

does the victims glimmer of hope justify her scam?

background: she herself suffered from an "incurable" illness for months, where she paid other angel conjurers (that's where she got the idea from). turns out it was just iron deficiency and easily cured with iron supplements. at that point she'd already paid several hundred dollars to those charlatans.

That is called ”caveat emptor” and it is the founding principle of America.

Just because the placebo effect is real, it's bad to advocate people spending $10k on a placebo.

Hey, some people buy ads on social media.

Yeah.... but somehow changing the memcpy method improved the audio also of the commenters. Unless the commenters have all the same PC, it all smell like "bias".

What do you mean the 90s? I can still hear my phone pining the tower when it's too close to my speakers ? (Eris E5 on balanced XLR into a Scarlett 2i4)

The common term is 'GSM buzz', you'll find a lot about it online.

I've also heard it in the 2000s.

On a Sunday morning I used to lie in with the radio on, sleeping on and off.

There was one song around 1999 that included the sound and also had my ring tone.

It was a very confusing time.

Found it: https://youtu.be/y8ClVMzt9Dw

[edit: added link]

I heard it just a couple years ago, when I used a 2G phone. 3G and 4G don’t have that fault.

Fault or feature? Was nice to get some warning your phone was about to ring

... in the 90s? It still happens today with my phone

No, we don't. And with having enough budget and skills we try our best to shield stuff we make. As for radio noises: just remember that every freakin physical body is an antenna. Not just wires. All we can do generally is tune things in such ways that they resonte in a range we need and be as silent as possible in all other frequencies.

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