Audiophiles Can't Tell Banana from $100K Speaker Cable

Forget thousand-dollar cables. Science just proved that a grocery store banana conducts audio signals just as well as luxury speaker wires.

An audiophile forum moderator named Pano designed a cheeky experiment in 2024 that recently went viral. He ran high-quality audio through various conductors, including professional copper wire, an unripe banana, old microphone cable soldered to pennies, and even wet mud.

Then he challenged fellow audio enthusiasts to identify which "cable" produced which sound. The recordings came from official CD releases, ensuring consistent source quality across all tests.

The results were stunning. Out of 43 guesses, only six were correct. Listeners couldn't reliably distinguish the banana or mud from expensive professional cables.

"The amazing thing is how much alike these files sound," Pano wrote after tallying the results. "The mud should sound perfectly awful, but it doesn't."

The physics behind this makes perfect sense. Bananas and mud act like resistors in series, changing signal levels but not much else. As long as basic electrical principles are met, the conductor material matters surprisingly little.

The Bright Side

This experiment delivers wonderful news for music lovers on a budget. You don't need oxygen-free copper, ultra-pure silver, or specialized wire constructions that cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Good old copper wire does the job beautifully. The findings suggest that factors like DC resistance and shielding matter far more than exotic materials or premium pricing.

While we obviously shouldn't wire our home theaters with produce (bananas cause signal loss and don't have flat frequency response), the point stands strong. Companies charging over $100,000 for speaker cables are selling more marketing than meaningful performance.

The audio community responded with humor and validation. "I prefer bananas as interconnects for the warm fuzzy potassium," one Reddit user joked. Another quipped about replacing their speaker cables with trays of mud years ago.

For anyone who's felt pressured to upgrade to expensive cables, this experiment offers sweet relief. Your mid-range equipment is probably doing just fine, and that money could go toward better speakers, headphones, or simply more music to enjoy.

Science wins again, one banana at a time.