Audioquest Thunderbird Zero Speaker Cable Review: 72V DBS Legit Science or Snake Oil? 

Free Range chicken fat?

Goose fat works better

@@harrisfogel6992 If you like a more organic, less anaylitical sound, free range chicken fat is definitely the way to go. You pay a bit more but it's absolutely worth it!...;).

@@danielp2937 I tried goose fat. I found that for me at least, goose fat resulted in a sound that was too muddy. The bass roll off was far too gentle, so it tended to bleed into the mids too much. I prefer a rolloff that's still gentle, but a little more controlled. This gives me that chocolatey midrange. Dark chocolate to be more precise..:)

Do Woke chickens favor singer/songwriter tracks? Do really mean and tough chickens produce a cable soak that works only on military march music? Do cables soaked in herb favor the Grateful Dead or Reggae? Asking for a friend too lazy to wake up.

@David Califano the problem is... there is absolutely NO problem with speaker cables, as long as they are reasonably sized and manufactured. And all this costs no more than 1 dollar per ft, even less. So you can take even the Creator in person or spend plenty of dollars, but there's nothing in the World that can be done to "improve" something that is already perfect given that any improvement cannot be heard by human auditory system!

@David Califano it's sad you have very little knowledge of signal propagation and just regurgitate marketing from exotic cable vendors that often topically have very little knowledge as well. This is a prime example of Dunning Kreuger cognitive bias as work.

They are now profided a RF filter actually now with dbs. 🤣

AQ also uses the dbs on digital signal cables. And it surely affects the digital signal according to the measurements I saw in Dutch research. Rather strange maintaining their faith in dbs with so many type of cables.

Go with Christ!

That is so true it is sad.

Yeah, look who they voted for in the last election. Ohh, sorry, it was stolen as TIME magazine admitted.

@@Spkrdctr Don't cry Argentina!!

Not just the American public, it's the same in every country, they are no different, there's one born every second in every country, so sad but true.

@@carmenandthedevil2804 post political views somewhere else. This is about audio

That was the best one. Use them as a whip with my Indiana Jones costume. He wins the prize

'So I got that going for me, which is nice.' LOL!! Thanks for that...

Q-Sys Theater system that is all digital, except speaker runs is all you need. No one can tell the difference at this level.

@@testthisfordecficiencies QSC is the best!

Game Sack - I wasn't expecting to see you on here, Joe. lol Yes, lots of psychological bias with this kind of stuff. I used to be into the whole "Audiophile" thing (on a budget), with M&K S-150 speakers, MX-350 sub, and messing with Digital Room Correction. I definitely wasn't immune to the whole "purchasing bias" or placebo thing either. It's a powerful thing for marketing. I eventually came to the conclusion that as long as you buy standard copper speaker with with a large enough cross section to handle the current with minimal voltage drop for the cable run, 99.99% of people would never be able to tell the difference in a blind test. We all enjoy tinkering and making other improvements to a system. Line level cables can have a much larger influence over the sound, but honestly the expensive speaker cables are just diminishing returns after a point, IMO. It's more important to just have a decent enough system, and enjoy listening to it.

@@electronash Any cable past $100 a meter is a waste of money unless you care about the way it looks and video shows it doesn't even get you a better made termination which was surprising to me as I thought that was the minimum they could do at $5000.

@@Jordonater these cables are 100 a meter or less....... For the manufacturer, lol. I'd love to see these margins

Former Car Audio installer here. I did the same - RG6 runs in many systems. Sometimes it was tricky to install and could get bulky if you were running 5/6 channels from the head, but the heavy shielding kept out all the alternator and CAN bus noise. The interconnect products back in those days for mobile audio were absolutely terrible - not sure how it is now but vehicles are noisier than ever and the market still seems flooded with poor quality interconnects. I would do show/competition systems and the customer would often specify whatever trendy snake oil cable was available and I would say, "Do you want it to look good or sound good?"

@@Cubik303 it's worse now and the market is still flooded with crap and snake oil cables. I tried AudioQuest at the request of one of my customers, to which I said, they are snake oil and definitely not up to snuff with all the noise in a car audio system. Those cables were worse than a basic RCA cable. Ended up with RG6 throughout. They are hard to run in modern cars, sometimes you just end up running them side by side, I use spark plug cable separators to keep them in place that way.

I like the stinger 8k's ive never had alt or static in my speakers or subs when i use them

@@SheikhN-bible-syndromestinger 8k is good stuff too. RG6 is cheaper though.

5,000 bucks would buy a fantastic system for me

Yeah. I think my entire system is about 5k total

@@SgtHenick in Australia, an SVS PB16-Ultra costs $5,000

My 1200 euro system (Denon avr + pair of B&W 606's) sounds great.

I could get a good system + high-end 85" TV for 5k.

I would go with his mentor Carl Sagan….Neil is too political. ..but Gene is telling it like it is..

Neil D Tyson! Hahahaha! I bet you're a Bill Nye the science guy fan too!

NDT talks so much because he loves the sound of his own voice. No one else can stand it, but he loves it’s.

OTOH saying that these effects have been known for 'hundreds of years' erm... no. Electronics are known for dozens, not hundreds of years. I'm fairly sure that in the beginning of the 20th century the knowledge of these things was very basic compared to today. Otherwise the WW2 warplanes would have had advanced electronics instead of mechanic or semi-mechanic devices.

Tyson is the BOZO of space science! Bill Nye knows more than he does and he isn't even a scientist! There are many great Astrophysicists here on RU-vid, JPL, and NASA. Check it out! Your mileage may vary!

What Kimber Kable series speaker cable did you use as I need to buy some for my system. Thanks for your input .🙏🏼👍🏽

Which Kimber cables did you buy?

Mogami is snake oil free.

Or the 38 golden eared suckers that bought these cables that just now realized that maybe they haven't been hearing the big difference that they have been going on and on about to all their friends. It's now up to 88.

@@iamjackalope my thoughts exactly

Ya, more likely to be purchasers 😂.

It's the dealers who sell them!

Or they r the sensible types who purchased Audioquest Redwood etc from from Ali expresss for 200GBP...They r 5000 GBP in the West... Why doesn't Sallas tell us THIS??

Where in the video does he listen to it?

It broke

@@econautx How do you listen to a cable? Besides this video is about OBjective measurable effects not SUBjective unmeasurable opinions.

You could modify them so they wire into your headphones. It would sound good but you have to deal with the weight of the cables on your chest. If work out in the gym then you can get used to it.

Plug them into a Sony Walkman and you have a killer hifi system!

Audioquest should add some FM tuner to the cable, so it would be at least some useful radio tuner plus antenna.

You don’t even need ears.

The connectors have a slight bend to them and I guess I put them in on an angle and one snapped.

@@Audioholics - so I had written my comment before I watched the last 1/3 of the video. I always thought that battery pack thing was a little bogus, now it’s just inexcusable. An antenna? In a cable? No wonder those cables do sound different to some people. I am surprised, but appreciate the time you take to do this. You’re a brave person, as AQ has lots of resources and could make your life difficult legally if they wanted to (even though it’s the truth!). I initially bought some Inaukustik 4mm2 (about 10/11 AWG) speaker cable, following your advice of “resistance is key”. I wanted to believe that better connectors, etc. could improve things. But I am going to return the Rocket 44s I am resting and go with something like Kimber that isn’t marketing fluff. I mean let’s face it, Audioquest are the flashiest looking. But it’s not about looks (not if they can’t perform as well as 10-gauge cable). So thank you for keeping us spending our hard-earned cash on stuff that matters, not shiny cables in a nice casing. I wanted to ask if you have looked at Anticables. They came across my radar and look interesting. They publish their performance figures plainly on the website. They even have this toroidal device which sits between the speaker and speaker cable, and sort of increases the load of the speaker; my understanding is that if the load is higher on the speaker, the amp has to work harder and thus (for Class A/AB) sounds better, as it’s not actually working a bit. Curious to hear your thoughts on it - I am sure you could do a whole show on those cables and the various load-balancing devices that exist (Kimber’s UK dealer Russ Andrews makes a similar thing). Really appreciate your efforts on this and keep up the GREAT work!

Doing the same here, Mogami W3104, I found it for around $4 a foot... Some PET sleeve and banana plugs... I'll have a pair of $30,000 speaker cables for under $100.

@@michaelwright1602 I made my cables following a video from Tharbamar. He also left links for the items he was using where I found most of the stuff I used. I did however made my cables somewhat different at the ends and they look much more professional than the ones featured on the video. I am extremely happy with the results and will never pay for exotic cables.

Yep. I don’t make my own but I buy Mogami / Neutrix and from a pro audio company. Pro audio ppl know the BS Audiophiles believe in and wont spend stupid money on stupid product generally. To put this in some sort of context when I was in home audio wholesale for many years I represented two very high profile well known “ audiophile” cable brands. I remember shaking my head in disbelief when a dealer ordered a $4000 HDMI cable ! Yep, 4K for a cable that simply cannot, ever, in any way best a $50 one. The problem is this. What do you expect someone who’s spent many thousands on amps and speakers to spend on cable? We all know it doesn’t have to be in the thousands but they do anyway because they can and also can’t fathom the disproportionate spend compared to components. Brands like Audioquest and many others know this and exploit it.

I use the OFC version of Canare 4s11, called 4s11G, in single wire, which is 11 AWG. It has low resistance, capacitance, inductance. They are excellent for the money and I am happy with them. I am done with expensive cables.

Bi-wiring is nonsense and a waste of money!

@@kahuna1247 Probably per cable.

Now that is a great business. The entrance price of magical cables + a residual income stream for cable "break-in". That is an even better business model. Wish I had thought about that. The snake oil is even more slippery.

I've seen their website before and their products do look interesting. I will try to get some samples to test out. Too bad they don't show measurements on their products.

I've got a feeling it's one of the big 3!

Don't give them ideas.

Some Hi-Fi people: Measurements don't matter. What I hear is all that matters! Also some Hi-Fi people: I don't do blind tests...

@@theGrindcrusher Why does it have to be one thing or the other? If we hear differences between cables then we should use measurements and testing to see if we can identify the cause of those differences. If we hear no difference then what is the point of taking measurements?

@@barrymiller3385 I think we are in agreement basically. My point is that some people make high claims they can hear a difference on a pice of audio equipment, but not keen on putting that claim to the test. There are of course lots of components that have subtle impact on the sound (for better or worse), so subtle they could be hard to pick out in a blind test on their own, but together might make a bigger impact. The claim on such components should be backed up by science and measurable facts, if you ask me.

@@theGrindcrusher I guess the point I am trying to make is that listening to music is a human listening experience. We hear what we hear. We either like it or we don't. Many factors may come into play in this whether they are acoustic, electronic, mechanical or psychological. Measurements should be used to better understand why we like what we like. Not to dispute it. So if you like the sound of one cable more than another then use every means at your disposal to find out why. If you don't hear any difference then there is no real benefit in measuring anything. Buy a cable because it is cheap. Or because it is blue! It is up to you.

@@barrymiller3385 I will add that we hear what we expect to hear, and what we want to hear. There is a lot of science on this. So the core question is; do you take the blue pill or the red pill? Do you want to know if you are actually hearing a difference? If you want to know you need to get rid of confirmation bias. I'm a red pill guy, but I like to say things like "if people WANT to get ripped off - what's the harm?" but I guess what I consider quackery and snake oil does push my buttons.

Could just be the act of getting up and swapping things, you won't be in exactly the same spot next time and you know which cable you just used? I'm about to try some QED Silver stuff,. See if it makes any difference lol. If not at least it'll stop people saying I need to use something other than regular wires

Lol, lots of BS artists around here. You ever heard the Audioquests? Of course your gonna say yes. If not, shut up.

@@carmenandthedevil2804 audioquest is just alot of bullshit

Know that you are gullible.

Thank you. Please note, that the PS Audio Rejuvenators, are not filters, or conditioners; they convert the AC wall voltage, current to DC, and thence, to high quality AC. Some are, `affordable.'

I can just hear the excuse from the person who bought the cable, "This means they forged the metal to its highest degree. A sign of the finest metals!"