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Wi-Fi for audiophiles: Alliance preps TimeSync certification program

Stuart Castle Silver badge

Getting consumers to look at decent quality audio components is not a bad thing. While I don't like them, in this way, Beats have been good for the industry as they have persuaded people that spending more than £20 on headphones is often a good thing.

That said, Beats are awful. Excellent for hip hop, but too bass heavy for pretty much anything else. Last time I tried them, I tried them with a CD consisting of classical music, talking, pop, hip hop and various other styles. The beats sounded good on hip hop, but for everything else where beaten by a pair of Sennheisers that cost about half the price.

That said, there are plenty of snake oil salesmen in the Audio and Video industries.

In my local Dixons, for instance, they had a special demonstration area set up apparently to demonstrate the difference between Monster (£80+) HDMI cables and standard HDMI cables. It consisted of two blu ray players connected to two HD Tvs, playing the same Blu Ray. I have to admit, on first viewing, the difference was striking. The picture on the TV they said was hooked up with a Monster HDMI cable was noticably better.

Then, I looked behind the TVs. The "Monster" HDMI cable was a standard HDMI cable. The "standard" HDMI cable used to hook up the other TV wasn't. It was a phono composite cable.

Don't get me wrong. In my experience, for long distance (i.e. >10m) cable runs, good quality HDMI cable *does* make a difference. How many people are likely to have greater than 10m cable runs in their home cinema setups though? For shorter runs, there is, IMO, no difference.

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