February 14, 2026
Banana beats copper? Hold my mud
Audiophiles Can't Distinguish Audio Sent Through Copper, Banana or Mud
Internet loses it as banana cables “sound fine” — skeptics cry stats, jokers sell mud‑wire
TLDR: A forum test found listeners couldn’t reliably tell music sent through copper, a banana, or wet mud, with results looking like random guesses. The comments exploded: some dunked on pricey audiophile cables, others slammed the small, messy test and demanded better science—while jokers pitched “organic mud” wires.
A forum mod on diyAudio ran music through copper wire, a banana, and wet mud—then asked listeners to guess which was which. The punchline: almost nobody could. Only 6 right picks out of 43, which math nerds say is about a 6% chance you’d see just by luck. The community? Absolutely lit. Some cheered, claiming pricey “magic” cables just got peeled by a piece of fruit. Others clapped back: cool party trick, but not science.
The battle lines are sharp. One side rolls its eyes at high‑end gear, calling a lot of it fluff and saying of course a little banana or dirt won’t wreck a signal—if anything, it just lowers volume a bit. The other side throws red flags: small sample, not enough trials, and was the “good” reference even good? A top‑liked quip imagines a startup hawking “organic mud speaker wires,” while another commenter reminisces about bamboo in old Technics amps like we’ve been here before. Meanwhile, stats sticklers demand a bigger, blinded test with perfect volume matching.
Pano’s inspiration—from old telegraphs that used the Earth as a return wire—only added fuel. Today’s vibe: science-ish stunt, savage memes, and a serious question—if a banana can hang with copper, how many boutique cables are just… bananas?
Key Points
- •A diyAudio moderator (Pano) tested whether listeners could distinguish audio routed through copper wire, wet mud, an old microphone cable soldered to pennies, and a banana from the original CD track.
- •Test versions included approximately 180 cm copper, 20 cm wet mud, 120 cm microphone cable with US pennies, and a 13 cm banana (plus a 120 cm variant), compared to the original file.
- •Results showed 6 correct answers out of 43 guesses (13.95% accuracy).
- •A binomial distribution analysis found a 6.12% chance of achieving the same or fewer correct answers by random guessing, slightly above the 5% significance threshold.
- •Conclusion: listeners could not reliably distinguish the original audio from the re-recorded versions, suggesting minimal perceptible changes from these materials.