Audiophilia

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing a £30,000 speaker cable. Peter, how many did you buy?

Speaker B: 00:00:29

None. I went for the £50,000 one. Wise choice, sir. So something that popped up in my news feed a little while ago, so I knew audiophiles were a bit over the top.

Speaker C: 00:00:47

This is audiophile with ph, not audiophiles of the kind like an mp3 that you might find on your computer.

Speaker B: 00:00:53

Because the former hates the latter.

Speaker C: 00:00:56

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: 00:00:57

Anyway, so it popped up in a news feed, it's a review for the, I'm going to mispronounce this, not deliberately, the Armonico Ethernet cable from Phono... Phonoacoustica. Phonoacoustica. Oh, it's an Ethernet cable. What it is, yeah, so it's an Ethernet cable and anyone who knows much about Ethernet cables they're all pretty standard, built to a standard. It's an Ethernet cable for connecting things within your, I guess you call it your deck, or your stack, or your rack, or whatever you want to call it. Anyway, so digital things. So I'm imagining that you could connect your digital amplifier to your digital players and things and basically a lot of it's done over Ethernet rather than... Is it now, right? Rather than... Because it's all digital. Yeah, because everything's digital. So why would you unnecessarily convert it back to analogue and then back again? So it's part of a class of audiophile equipment that includes basically the network switches, that you can connect everything up together and make a little network to connect all your kit.

Speaker A: 00:02:15

Sounds really handy, I might get myself one.

Speaker B: 00:02:17

Yeah, but what was astonishing was the price of these things. I'm just trying to find it. Yeah, so the price, one cable, one meter long, 5,500 euros. And for the one and a half meter long, 6,800 euros.

Speaker C: 00:02:36

Well, that's less than 50% more. So you should definitely get that one. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. With good value, I think. Yeah, it's much cheaper. That is definitely a saving because it'd be much easier to get that than it is to move your object closer together.

Speaker B: 00:02:51

Well, especially if moving it, in moving it, interrupts something else. Ah, the sort of the stereo feng shui. Exactly, yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: 00:02:59

I wonder how much the stereo costs, but anyway, keep going.

Speaker B: 00:03:02

Anyway, so these cables are rated for 100 base T, I think, which means they're quite a very basic cable. An equivalent one, if you bought one off, would probably cost you about 50p. And would do the same job, exactly the same job. No, or would it? Or would it? Or would it be doing right? Was it 50p versus 5,000? That's what we're here to say.

Speaker A: 00:03:29

It's doing it 10, I mean, how many magnitude? I don't know. But, yeah.

Speaker B: 00:03:34

So, this got me thinking about audiophiles in general and their obsession about chasing whatever little quality it is that they're looking for. Tweakers, they're called. Tweakers. Yeah. Tweakers with their speakers. But also, other sufferers from what I like to think of as techno mysticism, which include, I'm afraid, lots of Apple users. Oh, no. He's done it again. He's opened the can of worms. Not all Apple users. You're just a Microsoft fanboy. That's your problem. Not all. Well, I'm not, actually. I'm a Linux user. And how do you know I'm a Linux user? Because they'll tell you. So, yeah, not all Apple users. So, let me qualify. So, I'm Mr. Function, right? I'm Mr. Function. Yep. I will choose the right tool for the job. And Apple have their place because it is computing for dummies. So, if you just want stuff to work, Apple's pretty good. It just works. It just works. Unless you want to do something that Apple doesn't want you to do, and then it just won't work. Yeah. But, you know, I use Linux for some jobs, but I use Windows for other jobs.

Speaker A: 00:04:54

And then when you're down the coffee shop, you tend to just bring out your Mac, don't you?

Speaker B: 00:04:57

And when I'm down the coffee shop, I bring out my Chromebook because that just works.

Speaker C: 00:05:02

Yeah. Oddly, when it comes to audio, the only... But Nick is now a resident audiophile having probably the most expensive stereo. But actually, the only Apple device I own is an iPod Classic. And that's going strong after at least... It's got to be at least 10, 15 years old now. But Peter's right. I also went on a bit of a shopping spree for expensive cables. These were, I think, all audio cables. So I found a £2,599 audio cable, not quite as expensive as Peter's. That was just £2,599. If it had been £2,600, I would not have bought that because that would have been a rip-off. I found a power cable. This isn't even a lead to transport sound. This is a power cable, right? For your stereo. It gave better power. The Siltek Triple Crown power cable, £16,690. But it claims that power cables actually have an unexpectedly big audible effect that degrades the reproduction of music. Magnetic leakages, yeah, that cause distortion in frequency ranges. And these distorted currents cause saturation in power cords, resulting into audible distortion at peak currents. So what they've done to develop this is they've used multi-physics software. And measuring equipment by FW Bell and audio precision. And it helped them to achieve their goals of extremely high levels of power integrity, leading to an astonishing subjective performance, which is interesting wording. They've managed to eliminate harshness and cause a complete lack of induced distortion. And they've got bass stability and ultra-realistic feel. But anyway, the most expensive one I found was a one metre pair of factory terminated Odin 2 speaker cables for £31,125. That is speaker cables. So yeah, so basically, I'm about 50 grand out now. But I've got a bloody good stereo as a result. What I want to know is, are your speakers on the bookshelf? Well, actually, I just play it through my mobile phone.

Speaker A: 00:07:13

But, you know, it sounds really good. I remember being at your house once, Nick, and getting in trouble with your partner because we were just really pushing your stereo to the limits.

Speaker C: 00:07:23

Yeah, we put Nathaniel Rateliff on kind of at 11. Well, it was about one o'clock in the morning.

Speaker A: 00:07:29

But the one that really did it was Sly and the Family Stone, Darts for the Music. So what's the question we're asking here?

Speaker B: 00:07:39

So I think the question we're asking is, what is driving this sort of obsession with performance, but ignoring the science behind it?

Speaker A: 00:07:55

Right. I think we're also probably making an assumption here that a cable worth £5,000 is not worth it, right? And you're not getting £5,000, whatever, you know, that's not reflected in the performance. So it's partly that. And I think it's also, are we also asking, do we want to go into, well, what other stuff do people obsess about and go into?

Speaker C: 00:08:14

There's a whole range of things this opens up.

Speaker A: 00:08:16

And is there any commonality across those things and the kind of people who are into them? Am I kind of poking the right bit? There's a whole bunch of things here. You're going the right way. Okay. So that being the case, who wants to delve into some of that?

Speaker B: 00:08:28

y back in the ancient days of: 2005

Speaker C: 00:10:47

Well, hang on. No, don't. Because why hasn't Peter mentioned cycling? You know, those cycling boards who have to get all the cycling equipment. Yeah, yeah. Peter, do you know any of those? Well, they have way too much of it.

Speaker B: 00:10:59

I'd say I'm pretty modest on the cycling equipment.

Speaker C: 00:11:01

But I bet you think you only buy the stuff you really need to get peak performance out of your bike. But I bet if there was an audiophile here, he'd say. If I did that, then I would probably just lose some weight. Well, how much does your bike cost? How much did your bike cost?

Speaker B: 00:11:18

It's a fairly sort of mid-range. What's that? I don't know. What's a mid-range tour? These like £10,000? My road bike is two and a half thousand pounds.

Speaker C: 00:11:27

Yeah, I reckon you double it because he knows Rosie's listening.

Speaker B: 00:11:31

But that was the latest bike I bought and that was six years ago. See, that's more than I would spend on a bike.

Speaker A: 00:11:36

Yeah. And so, look, I think we're talking about men. Men get obsessed with stuff. Controversial. Maybe, maybe not. So, for example, I get this a lot in my world. Less so now that I mix less with other filmmakers. But you chuck a bunch of filmmakers together. They talk about gear loads, which is not really my thing. You know, and also when we talk about music and collecting albums, let's say. And I think one of the things that men like to do is it's a nice one. It's a way they can talk to one another. Two, it's a nice gives you kind of nice ownership of something that you can get. You can you can kind of master. Control. Yeah. And you know who can talk about, you know. And slightly compete. And compete. Who's got the best cables. Yeah. And you get super. Because it's very quantitative. Right. Quantitative rather than qualitative. And so it's easy to sort of get those facts kind of thing. Or it's not easy.

Speaker B: 00:12:31

ey go. Well, I've got a spare: 3000

Speaker A: 00:13:04

I also think I think all the time they're going. Is there a noise? I bet there is. Is there isn't there? And they're kind of checking that.

Speaker C: 00:13:10

But it's I think the what Peter is alluding to, I think. And we ought to come out and say it because it'll be what a lot of people are shouting right now is that, OK, we're all audiophiles in the sense that, you know, I think that my stereo sounds better than listening to it on a mobile phone, right? My my definitely does. And and, you know, using a thicker cable is definitely better. Right. Those things are definitely better. We all accept that probably to a certain point, spending money on your equipment is going to make the music sound better, but it is going to taper off. Right. And and I think Peter probably thinks and we'll touch on this, that there is a point at which it's literally imperceptible. It's scientifically impossible that you could get an improvement because you have already got every single bit that is in the recording. Every single, you know, thing that was came out of the musician. Yeah. Is correctly captured and is being reproduced by your speakers at this point.

Speaker B: 00:14:16

And that's why I found that Ethernet cable particularly ridiculous, because unless you're operating in a very RF noisy environment, that that's it. That cable has got so a basic cable is technically the same as your expensive. The bits that go in are the same as the bits that come out. The bits that come out are exactly the same. You could argue, well, what about error? You know, error bits, error. Well, no, because the protocol stack that drives that cable has got so much redundancy and error correction that it is.

Speaker C: 00:14:51

So it's rather like saying it's rather like saying that, you know, if you download a game from Steam through the right cable, it's a better game or something. Yes. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I will I'm going to pick up on this in a minute from a scientific point of view.

Speaker B: 00:15:04

So what I mean is that so put it in slightly more scientific terms for an analog cable or a range of analog cables, there is a diminishing return on investment. Whereas with a digital system, like particularly the cable here, it's a discontinuous diminishing returns. It will just at one point, it will just level off and there's no no advantage whatsoever.

Speaker C: 00:15:29

Yeah. So from an information perspective, all of the information going in is the same as the information coming out. There is no gap. There's no difference that you can make up.

Speaker A: 00:15:38

OK, guys, but we're going around in circles. No, no, no, no, we're not. We're getting somewhere.

Speaker C: 00:15:41

I think we are.

Speaker A: 00:15:41

Don't listen. So the thing is, because hold on, because all I think we've said so far is, hey, some people take it so far and we all agree with that. And then the question is, well, why is that? And we've talked a little bit about.

Speaker C: 00:15:53

So can I get on to that?

Speaker A: 00:15:54

And now go for it, Nick.

Speaker C: 00:15:56

OK, so so the reason I think the thing is that in as much as let's let's run with this hypothesis that at some point, actually, you get literally zero improvement. The difference between spending £200 on a cable and £20,000 on a cable is literally zero. Why then do people do it? Well, it puts it into the same category as a lot of other pseudosciences. Right. So why are there dowsers? Why are there people who believe in astrology? Why are there people who believe in homeopathy? Why do people trust psychics? Right. Now, all these things work subjectively. You ask it. You ask anyone who likes those things. Does it work? There will be no doubt in their mind that it does. And that if you're if you're being sceptical about it, it's probably you're either being a bit malicious or it's probably because you haven't tried it and you haven't seen that it works. And so there's there's a whole category of sort of, well, a way of forming beliefs, I suppose, which is which is sort of uncritically accepts that your subjective experience is correct. And that's because 99.9% of the time it is right. We go round thinking we think that, you know, this thing is hotter than that thing. And it's because it is because it is. And so, you know, I think this is not a weird. It's not a weird thing that's going on. It's an entirely explicable thing, which is that people experience this feeling is better. The experience you get from spending £20,000 on a cable is better. And that trumps any of Peter's nonsense about information theory because it sounds better. And, you know, there's a whole host of things which are incorrect beliefs that people have that are nevertheless very unshakable. So you talk about those pseudosciences, but also a lot of things that a lot of people actually just uncritically believe, which aren't pseudoscience. Religion. God. No, I'm that I'm talking about things that are uncontroversial. So things like that. A lot of people believe they're allergic to monosodium glutamate, for example. Now, there's been no study that has been able to unearth evidence that that anyone is allergic to MSG. A lot of parents think that if their children consume sugar, high sugar, it makes them hyperactive. But they've done double blind experiments where parents have been have been split into various groups. And their assessments about how hyperactive their children are based entirely on whether they thought the kids had had sugary drinks and not on whether the kids had actually been given sugary drinks. And yet, you know, a lot of people just think it's a given that sugary drinks make you hyperactive. There are a whole host of things like, you know, that turkey eating turkey makes you sleepy, that that chili seeds are the hot bit that, you know, there's just loads and loads of things that people go around that are wrong, that are nevertheless widely held beliefs. There's a there's about a 20 meter long Wikipedia page about widely held misconceptions. So, you know, in as much as that's true, the thought here and the reason that there's a whole page on Rational Wiki called Audio Woo about this kind of audiophilia, you know, phenomenon that it's all a big pseudoscience. But it really just puts it into the same category as those things. Now, I think that there is. I mean, I would imagine that most audiophiles probably think, well, no, hang on. I'm not a flipping astrology person. I'm a virtually an engineer. I'm really into the science of all this and how the bits move and where magnetic resonances happen. And, you know, the precise acoustics of where I should. I've got to move my speaker one millimeter to the right. So so they probably, I would imagine, react quite badly against this claim.

Speaker A: 00:19:37

Exactly. Good. And that kind of brings as you were speaking there. And by the way, Nick, you moved us on beautifully there. Well done. A lot of a lot of things that feel in common here is these sort of people, whether it be about stereos or bikes or whatever, very can be very evangelical. They'd be very emotional and very emotionally attached to this. And so it's dearly held beliefs. As you say, it's very subjective. All of and so all of that makes it very difficult to contradict or with that sort of thing, because it doesn't or none of those things are really rational.

Speaker C: 00:20:14

Let's say they're difficult to rationally argue about sort of cognitive dissonance of I've just spent £20,000 on this thing. I'm going to believe it works. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rather than that, I mean, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: 00:20:26

And also, we haven't even gone to what they listen to.

Speaker C: 00:20:28

Yeah, I mean, so the like indicators of pseudoscience are things like so not not collecting evidence properly. So there is actually there are you find articles on the Internet by audiophiles saying this is why double blind trials don't work. A lack of openness to testing. You know, I don't need to test it. I've I can hear the difference. An absence of sort of progress, which is more of a science thing, but that, you know, astrology is basically the same as it was 500 years ago, whereas science isn't. Personalization, which what you remember, it's very much about my own subjective experience. And and the use of misleading language, which you do get a lot like the whole multi physics software. Yeah, you know, resonance. I love a bit of it. So so it does look it does, unfortunately, really have quite a lot of tick quite a lot of the boxes for pseudoscience. I'm I'm going to leap to its defence in a minute. But Peter might want to.

Speaker B: 00:21:22

Peter, I, I have another hypothesis that it's and it's related. It's related to the this sort of I think there's a people need something to believe in. There's another quote that I came. So what that suggests to me is that there's a sort of spirituality void in people's lives in our secular world. So as being replaced by 30,000 pound cable given up, devoting themselves to any given religion, they still there's still a need in the human psyche to just believe in something that you know what that reminds me of?

Speaker C: 00:21:56

It's the my son is into Warhammer 40k and there's a there's a whole faction there. I think they're called the Mechanicus who worship the machine spirit. It's a bit like so you're saying these audio files are like the worshipers of the machine spirit. Placate it with the right cable. It's got me.

Speaker B: 00:22:11

We've made it just as an aside. Maybe wonder what it what I filled my spirituality gap with. And I'd say actually, it's rationality. It's it's it's like it's but it's a bit a lot of my my my sort of my I wouldn't say devotion, but a lot of my sort of rationality is is very much faith based in the sense that I read and read and understood enough about how it works for me to. Jump on that particular train. But I don't know everything about how it works. You know, it might be just as wrong. There might be something other. I think that's right.

Speaker C: 00:22:46

And also, I think Peter is a bit of a fundamentalist in his kind of the fact that he thinks, for example, that, you know, any on an ornamentation on your furniture is it should be purged. Yeah. So he's like he is like a kind of puritan when it comes to rationality, sort of, you know, things that don't directly contribute to making correct beliefs about things. Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:23:06

You were born in the wrong time in a way, Peter, weren't you? Because you'd have done really well, for example. I can imagine it was a pilgrim go to America. And in the same vein, I can imagine you during the the English Civil War being a roundhead. And, you know, you know, and yeah, yeah, yeah. That was sort of fit well.

Speaker C: 00:23:26

So I can. What about my defence of audiophilia then? Yes, let's hear it. So first of all, a generic defence of placebos, right? They're placebos, but they do work, right? That like that's the weird thing about them. Doctors prescribe them sometimes because they do work right. And I that, you know, there's a famous and controversial wine study where, you know, they looked at the brains of people who were drinking the same wine but believed it to be more expensive and concluded that they actually did enjoy it more. Right. So you tell someone that this wine is really expensive. They don't just say, oh, that's nicer because they're trying. They're trying to fool themselves. They genuinely do enjoy it more. And I suspect you would find the same with these audiophiles. I suspect if you look at the brain of someone listening to the music on a £20,000 speaker cable, they're going to be seen to be enjoying it more than so.

Speaker A: 00:24:24

So that's an interesting philosophical point in there, isn't it?

Speaker C: 00:24:27

But that's a sort of argument sort of more or less supporting the scientific idea that doesn't do anything but there's the placebo effect. But I mean, I think just coming at it from the perspective to put the defence there from the perspective of actual audiophiles themselves, who I don't think would like to believe it's a placebo. But I mean, well, two things really. One is that, you know, this whole idea, which I think is cropped up recently, that you just believe the science uncritically is I don't I don't think you always should. I mean, science, you know, science in inverted commas, which isn't really a thing anyway, it's just a bunch of people doing science, you know, often comes out with things that are later disproven. And, you know, for some reason that we haven't thought about. So, you know, things I mean, you've only got to look at look at. I mean, I know dietary science is the bottom of the barrel. But the fact that, you know, 30 years ago, fat was bad. Now then sugar became bad. Now it's, you know, it's sort of well, I think sugar is still considered to be bad, but carbs that are bad. And it's like, OK, but actually 30 years ago, anyone who came out and said, well, actually eating fat is fine, would have been derided as a sort of lunatic. It would have been considered to be pseudoscience to say, oh, no, you can eat fat and still be thin. You know, just during the coronavirus pandemic for a couple of months at the beginning of the pandemic. And this has been memory hold a bit. But, you know, the scientific advice in the UK was that masks don't work and people shouldn't wear them. And then, of course, you know, that totally changed now as a result of evidence. So so there's there's there's that. First of all, let's not believe, you know, just let's not believe Peter and his science uncritically. But the other thing is, everyone says, did you in a double blind trial? People cannot tell the difference between, you know, a gold speaker cable and a normal speaker cable. I cannot find any double blind trials on the Internet where they've actually done this. So everyone says, yeah, everyone says, oh, oh, you know, oh, the thing is, you can't tell if it's an MP3 or MP4. So you can't really tell, you know, it's it's in it's imperceptible to humans. As far as I can tell, no one's actually actually done the test. So so yeah, so I suppose I'm saying I would err because of my priors on the side of thinking that it's a pseudoscience. It looks a bit like a pseudoscience, but I'm certainly not saying it's got zero probability of being correct. So, you know, if you are a £20,000 speaker cable guy, you've got that to cling on to. I'm not going to.

Speaker B: 00:26:58

But if you're willing to participate in a blind trial. Yeah. Yes. You can always set one up. Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:27:03

Yeah. OK, to finish this off question. Pretty obvious. What do you spend too much money on? Or what's your spiritual void that you fill something? What do you fill it with? Could be going to church. I don't know. Nick? Well, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:27:20

Board games. Yeah. But but I mean, at the same time, they do have a practical utility. And I'm a bit of a kind of anti board game fetishist person. So there are some people who I would say the equivalent of the autofiles here are the board gamers who laminate their instructions and they buy sleeves for their cards and they clip their counters. And they do all these things which are very fetishistic. It's like, OK, we've got this lovely new board game now. I'm going to put all the cards in little plastic sleeves so that they don't get grubby. I hate all that. I feel like a game getting used and worn. And yes, OK, sometimes you can tell that that deck's, you know, older than that deck. And I like all that. I quite enjoy. But that's so I feel like the audiophile end of the board game community. I'm at the opposite end to them, really. But but yeah, I love I love board games. I've got way more than the average person. And I get a real joy from buying a new one. But yeah, but at the same time, I mean, it's you know, I do think I'll be there's no no one's going to tell me that one board game is the same as another. They are all different. Yeah, it's true. Don't look at me like that.

Speaker A: 00:28:21

Yeah, no, you're wrong. Except if it's a euro with a pasted on thing. Yeah, it's another cube shuffler. Yeah, let's not go down this. No, let's not.

Speaker C: 00:28:33

Peter, what do you what do you feel your spiritual void with? Well, is it have I got a spiritual void? I think the only thing I wouldn't I would really miss if I didn't do it, I think or feel an unscratched itch is music playing piano. And it's not dissimilar in that, you know, when I got my new piano, it really felt like it was a massive step up step up. And I suspect if I got if someone gave me a Steinway grand piano, I would go I would think it was much, much better than it actually was just because it's, you know, one of the world's most expensive pianos. So, yeah, I can definitely see myself having a kind of audiophile strand.

Speaker A: 00:29:15

We'll come to you last, Peter, because it's only fair that you round it round it off because you started it. Actually, so as you were spiritual, I think it's the same with me, Nick. I'm into my music. I listen to a lot. I play a lot as in play instruments a lot. And as I've said before, not nearly certainly when I'm playing them, not nearly to the skill that Nick does. And yet I do get a real spiritual buzz out of it. And I was thinking about this morning as I was driving here, because I really love gospel music. And it's a shame that I love it as much as I do. And I'm not and I don't believe in God, because it would be it's a waste on me in a way, I suppose. And in terms of what I spend too much money on really easy camera gear and anything associated with it. And even though I said, hey, those guys, they're really into that. It's a bit like Nick talking about the guys are laminating things.

Speaker B: 00:30:05

Yeah, actually, the key difference is you're not signaling about it. You're there. It's there to do a job for you. Yeah, until he meets another camera guy.

Speaker A: 00:30:12

Yeah, I do get lenses out. Oh, you say you got the old A7? Yeah. Oh, nice.

Speaker C: 00:30:17

And I've got my f-stops got to 38.

Speaker A: 00:30:22

And every time I get something my wife says to me, and it really irritates me every time she always goes, But what does this do? That's different to the other one that you got that was amazing.

Speaker C: 00:30:30

Probably your reaction to me getting a new board game, I would have thought.

Speaker A: 00:30:33

Yeah, well, no. But the difference is between board games and camera gears. Camera gear is bloody expensive. I'm not saying you're, you know, but and also even camera bags. I recently got a bag that cost way beyond what it should do.

Speaker B: 00:30:47

Is it a nice bag?

Speaker A: 00:30:48

Does it bring you joy? It does, but I'm actually a little bit disappointed in it. It does not quite.

Speaker B: 00:30:54

It's you should have spent five times the amount. Yeah, and you could take it to a tailor to alter it.

Speaker A: 00:31:00

Yeah, I could. And also, I have to say my photography has not gone up in quality by as much as I was hoping.

Speaker B: 00:31:05

But not even because of the new bag.

Speaker A: 00:31:07

No, not even because of that. Disappointing. It is disappointing. Peter?

Speaker B: 00:31:12

Well, 10 years ago, it would have been bicycles. I'm not I'm not a competitive cyclist. I've never really considered myself to be very competitive. I just like them. But I've never really bought big, expensive ones. I always had a sort of quite a.

Speaker A: 00:31:28

It's just with the cheap ones like that £3,000 one.

Speaker B: 00:31:31

Yeah, well, that's that's not that high. Anyway, so but now it's probably probably computer bits and bobs. I said it's not very expensive because I tend to buy sort of new stuff, but it's expensive in terms of my time. I often do a lot of tinkering that probably doesn't necessarily need to be done.

Speaker A: 00:31:54

So do you have a garden shed where you can do it? No, no, I don't. I can sense that you might feel like you want one.

Speaker B: 00:32:01

Well, in the next decade, hopefully when we get a bit more spare time, DIYing is going to be the time sink, just endlessly tinkering with the house.

Speaker A: 00:32:12

Actually, I spend a lot of money on DIY stuff at the moment, and I've got a saw, which I'm an electric circular thing that I don't really know. I haven't figured out how to use it yet.

Speaker B: 00:32:20

But yeah, big shed. First major DIY project when we buy the house we're going to live in will be build a shed to second job, go and buy some tools to fill it with. There you go.

Speaker A: 00:32:34

Yeah, right. Let's wrap up there. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights. Until next time, goodbye.