I tend to tangle and snag cables when putting bikes closely together.

Also my helmet doesn't fit properly on the stem. It's always colliding with cables. Small nuisance when parking my bike somewhere. Pretty annoying in rare cases where I don't want to ride with a helmet.

@Willeke ah it's like "pro: supple tyre, con: supple tyre". I think there's a good reason I usually don't read bike reviews. I don't know any other product where press fails so badly.

bike and bike component reviews are the most un-scientific reviews out there

@gschenk the trick is to not have shift cables :p

@Michael Audiophile equipment is probably worse 😉

@Erlkoenig ah yes :D

at least you can measure weight or drag reduction... even if the advantage is negligible

@Erlkoenig but they often don’t bother

much amusement

@Criggie I’m always amazed what kind of products exist and are apparently profitable to design, manufacture and sell

Gimmicks that look good on social media often sell... in this case, particularly if the target audience knows nothing about "real" bicycles and how good they can be

Also: Spoked wheel wins again 😉

@Erlkoenig there are good reasons to buy bikes. Audiophile equipment is utterly useless. People who buy it practically asked to get duped in reviews.

I don't expect much from those reviews. Mostly read it to see if they mention some press release or changes from conti.

Sure, but there is high-quality sensible audio equipment that also has a certain cost (mostly for professional use though)

Always get either inexpensive audio stuff or pro audio equipment.

yup, though noise-cancelling is expensive but can be nice

I got an arse kicking bass and can hear dialogues in modern movies with a pair of Behringer Studio monitors I bought 18 years ago.

hearing modern movie dialogue is certainly a benchmark 🤣

If you have directional audio in a near field you can resolve where a speaker is and actually here them while all hell breaks loose in your periphery.

modern wireless earbuds are incredibly good... even though "real" headphones technically have better audio quality, the closeness/directness plus noise-cancelling really give a certain immersion. squeezing a battery, antenna, RF modem, signal processor (DSP), several sensors and microphones into such a tiny space is impressive

Only point is there's no black magic in audio. Pretty good isn't all that expensive or innovative if you don't try to bend physics: low frequency need large size and fine temporal resolution needs wide bandwidth.

@gschenk actually I’m always impressed how good the bass output of many small bluetooth speakers is

our Marshall Emberton 2 is actually way too bass heavy, for once I wish it had a built-in equalizer