Science

Are we making banana phone happen?

The article is interesting, and I would not spend the crazy amounts that some people do on cables, but cable quality does still matter.

First of all, the article says that one area it definitely does make a difference is:

Interference-prone environments: Poorly shielded cables can pick up interference, affecting signal quality. However, these tests show a broader point. Detecting audible differences is surprisingly difficult when visual cues, price, and expectation are removed. Without context or labels, even ridiculous conductors fail to produce reliably noticeable changes.

However, the tests arent testing for interference at all. They're performed openly on a desk without much around, but it then goes on to conclude:

If wet mud and bananas don’t degrade the signal in ways listeners can detect, then subtle improvements from expensive cables are even less likely to be audible. In other words, the threshold for hearing real differences is far higher than marketing often implies.

Like yes, there is obviously marketing hype, especially if buying a name brand cable, but the quality of shielding legitimately can make a difference, especially if you're running it alongside power cables / extension cords.

The other factor that can make a difference, has nothing to do with audio quality but just physical convenience, in that pure Copper cables will be more expensive, but thinner and more flexible, then Copper Clad Aluminum (CCA). CCA is cheaper, and if your runs are static and unmoving there's zero issue with it, but if you're moving your speakers around a bunch, the stiffness compared to copper can be annoying.

Over the years my relative has spent allot of money on these non balanced audio cables. Every time he 'upgrades' he says it sounds so much better. I hear no difference. Then he puts the volume up so my ears hurt and asks if i can hear it. I just smile at that point.

Wait Can I be the conductor? Wireless is cool but Bluetooth is kinda iffy.

If audible differences were present, they failed to provide reliable markers for identification. And although a slight listener preference for the banana recordings emerged, it didn’t correlate with accuracy.

Hell yes, 2026 the year of banana hi-fi meta 🤘

I bought and installed Monster cables for my fairly high end (Not audiophile) HiFi setup in the 80s. Oxygen free copper yada yada. It's true that they are fat conductors (good), very flexible sheathing (good), transparent (cool), but I could have saved a bunch by using fat plain electrical cables.

This surprising similarity prompted an important clarification: the test didn’t rely on exotic or high-end gear. It used ordinary consumer gear like a laptop, a USB audio interface, and standard recording software.

Well this could be part of the reason other than the banana ,etc, just adding resistance.

But you'd have to vet your random participants. Like for instance my wife's phone speaker is terrible and she turns it up to 100% to watch videos. She doesn't notice anything wrong, but for me the distortion and clipping hurts my head. Some people just dont "hear" bad audio.

I mean, Monty at Xiph.org is on file for stating that Hi-Res music is snake oil.

FLAC is great for critical listening and Jukebox mode. Otherwise, a decent Opus file on a modern DAP works fine.

My experience with cables is that they do matter, especially on the interconnect side, but price has very little to do with the perceived difference in fidelity or sound signature.

As for interference and shielding, yes this can indeed make a difference, but it's rarely an issue unless we are trying to measure the noise floor, or using a really weirdly balanced levels. (like very quiet source attached to an amp that is cranked to max)

Help, in an effort to save money I connected my tube amp to my speakers with bananas and I'm not getting the rich, lossless sound quality I was led to expect from this headline, in fact unless the speakers are broken, the banana doesn't work very well as an audio cable

as i've come to realize from trying to troubleshoot why my speakers sometimes give me a headache, it turns out none of this makes the slightest fucking difference if people can't master their audio for shit.

So many youtubers are putting out borderline unlistenable videos, and then i find the one person who doesn't fuck it up and holy fuck i can actually hear what they're saying