"The Audio Critic" B.S. or what?

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A friend of mine is an electrical engineer who also happens to know a bit of hi-fi. His wife once told him that "better" cables and interconnects did not sound any better when he got those expensive wires. His wife is not a dieshard; yet, I know she has good opinions about good sounds. So, he took all the cables to his work and did some measuring and experiments. I am not a true audiophile and am not interested in tech talks, so I do not remember all the details in precise terms. Nevertheless, the gist of his findings was that there was not a big difference between expensive cables and decent cables -- I won't name the brands. Then, he did a rudimentary blind test himself with a little help of his wife. Without the benefit of preconception, he failed to differentiate cables and interconnects, of which the price differential was huge. So, I borrowed the high end wires and experimented with them. Allowing myself to get aquainted with the wires for about several days, I did a rudimentary blind test with some help of my wife -- she was unhappy about it. I got 50% right out of 6 tries (3 with the better wires, another 3 with the mundane counterparts at reasonable volume level). Just fulfilling the law of average. My friend did even worse than I did defying the statistical odds -- less than 50%. Our equipments were reasonably good albeit not super. The friend of mine was trying to get deeper into the subject by making inquiries as to whether the signal difference he attained in his lab was sufficient enought for human brain to detect. He must have been told something about it, but I have not heard him about it. Nor am I interested in delving into the matter any more deeply. It is good if there truly is a difference we can appreciate between mundane and high end wires and shields. But, I obviously failed to appreciate it. So, the issue is simple for me now: save the money for the wife and the kids, or CD's and live entertainments. Unless you are rich enough to sniff at the amount. By the way, the interconnects and speaker cables that I am using for music listening did not cost me more than $200 (at max) altogether.

I've heard the difference between ALL the different cables I've tried over the past few years, and I don't care if there are those out there who don't hear a difference. Please do not profess to pooh pooh on me, and I won't do the same on you. MY OWN BROTHER AND SISTER IN LAW BOTH, ARE ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS. She has had a problem hearing in one ear since childhood, so she doesn't care much about my system in any of its incarnations (yet). And when listening to my system, he (my brother) has had ZERO trouble ever hearing the difference between cables, CD's and CD-R copies...and the one that troubled him most: The fact that an old copy of a rock album ON VINYL...killed the CD so badly. He knows I'm not nuts anymore...And I don't just spend thousands of dollars "on wire". I've gotten most of it used (like the rest of my system). I don't call getting a $3100 cable, for $795, "being bad with money". And it has beaten all the others I've thrown at it, so there!

Jostler: Thank you for your feedback. You will note that I stated "TAC...to call it as they test and hear it". I do believe that, while having significantly more reliability than sighted evaluation, double blind "testing" absent accurate measurements, is not at all consistently reliable. This has been demonstrated repeatedly by those who claim reliable accuracy under double blind conditions and fail, often to the point of preferring a sample to itself. In well controlled tests comparing the influence of the visual aspect,it was found that the Brand name of the product was the strongest influence upon listener preference. The more subtle the distinction becomes, the more difficult it is to reliably recall or identify that distinction. And communicating those distinctions via totally verbal descriptives is far too subjective to be truly useful. I am, of course, not referring to gross differences, which can be difficult enough for some.

cables do make a difference they all have their own sound and you have to try out variuos ones to find the one that works in your system.That said one does not need to get fovered by the MIT Nordst and Kimbers of the world.I dont care if you paid 800 for 3100 cable you still got fovered. Let look at MIT.If i suggested your preamp have bass and treble control almost all Audiophiles would jump on me.This is considered adding noise and junk to the signal path.Then why would anyone pay for cables with a box which is acting like a tone control.Is not pure and simple and un colered what we strive for.Yet people are takin in by MIT hype.They are coloring the sound by what is in their circuit.Tara labs ans others are also guility of this.Belive me you can find the wire of your dreams for 200\300 range.If you need an ego stroke go nuts.If you want bang for the buck.Get an Electricain to run dedicated lines.Thers is a good spot to sink 1k into.