2. cables
  3. 124957-818

Are audiophiles still out of their minds?

I've been in this hobby for 30 years and owned many gears throughout the years, but never that many cables.  I know cables can make a difference in sound quality of your system, but never dramatic like changing speakers, amplifiers, or even more importantly room treatment. Yes, I've evaluated many vaunted cables at dealers and at home over the years, but never heard dramatic effect that I would plunk $5000 for a cable. The most I've ever spent was $2700 for pair of speaker cables, and I kinda regret it to this day.  So when I see cable manufacturers charging 5 figures for their latest and "greatest" speaker cables, PC, and ICs, I have to ask myself who buys this stuff. Why would you buy a $10k+ cable, when there are so many great speakers, amplifiers, DACs for that kind of money, or room treatment that would have greater effect on your systems sound?  May be I'm getting ornery with age, like the water boy says in Adam Sandler's movie.
dracule1
wattsperchannel
142 posts
 

inna and others here left shaking their heads,

I design and build high precision electrical components for folks like Mercedes Benz (S-Series), US Military (M-1 Abrams Tank and F-16 Fighter Jet), and the National Atomic Particle Accelerator (Fermi Lab).  I suppose we could discuss Gauss's laws, Maxwell Equations, eddy currents, skin effect etc., but it would serve no purpose here. Get close to the the facts and the OP will revert to anecdotal gibberish or personal insult.

The OP just appears to enjoy making others feel bad......period. If you corner him with facts which demonstrate the preposterous nature of his claims, he will retaliate with a personal dagger like his endless insults to Geoff, his comments to folkfreak regarding the SQ of his DCS stack or to me regarding my Nordost cables, the merits of which are laughable on their face.

His stock in trade seams to be the nebulous because that allows him to play his game.  For instance, when I point out the vagaries of using poorly designed DBT's (i.e., those lacking degrees of freedom, statistical significance or variable control), in his very next posts he references two more DBT's of dubious design and doubles down on their use as justification of an irrational position. Poorly designed experiments are used in marketing and politics; not to determine the truth. This is not the behavior of a person seeking the truth, but rather avoiding it because it gets in the way of his joy ride.  

There are literally thousands of permutations of a DBT-DOE that can create completely misleading results. Take components with an impedance matching too close to parity. The worse a cables impedance characteristics the better the system is likely to perform. A coat hanger will likely sound better than a Nordost wire and a long coat hanger will sound better than a short one. This proves absolutely nothing. 

No thoughtful electrical engineer would question that a nordost wire mated with a system designed to work best with the nordost wire will reach sonic heights well beyond a system made with the equivalent design approach using a coat hanger. Yet people get these issues confused, or worse, knowingly use the confusion for devious purposes.

wattsperchannel
142 posts
 

dracule1 OP931 posts06-14-2016 3:20amPeople like you who can afford expensive sports cars, mechanical watches, jewelry for the wife, first edition books, dCS gear, Odin cables have lost touch with people of lesser means. You’re failed trickle down economic theory of "if I’m rich and spend money, the little people will benefit" pretty much says it all. This reminds me why I don’t hang around with the filthy rich.
This post speaks volumes----a lot of butt hurt here. 
inna
7,296 posts
 
From the OP's perspective I could probably advocate the point that most components are seriously overpriced too. As an example, you can get a great if not outstanding sounding acoustic guitar made by a famous Spanish master for, say, $7k-$10k. It takes talent and decades of work to be able to build an instrument like that. What equipment can you get for $10K ? Decent sounding Rowland or Gryphon integrated? Not much. So they are overpriced big time too, correct?
dracule1 OP
1,085 posts
 
Inna,

"Dracule1, unless you are a rocket scientist you cannot say if this kind of science is required or not to design or build a great cable. You simply are not qualified to judge it from this angle.
And another point. Some people have enough funds for everything including $70k cables, but I don't think that you do. Nor do I. Yes, wealth distribution in this country is far from fair. I don't like it but I can tolerate it unless it is totally out of control. Can you?"

Goodpoint. I'm not a rocket scientist, but I have physicist friends and colleagues, one of whom works for NASA and another of whom is a die hard audiophile!  When I show some of them, who are not audiophiles, cable prices and cable manufacturer's white sheets, they can't believe the cost and the unsupported dribble.  They go on to shred every voodoo claim by these high priced manufacturers. So can I get some love here 😘? BTW, I was a chemistry major in college, so I do have more than basic understanding of physics and materials science.

If I save up for several years, I could afford $70k cables, but why would I waste my money on them? I would put that into my retirement account.

You don't think $100k for audio wire is totally out of control? I guess we just have very different tolerance levels for the absurd.

Anyway, thanks for your input.
dracule1 OP
1,085 posts
 
"From the OP’s perspective I could probably advocate the point that most components are seriously overpriced too. As an example, you can get a great if not outstanding sounding acoustic guitar made by a famous Spanish master for, say, $7k-$10k. It takes talent and decades of work to be able to build an instrument like that. What equipment can you get for $10K ? Decent sounding Rowland or Gryphon integrated? Not much. So they are overpriced big time too, correct?"

Being a classical guitarist myself, I really appreciate your comment here. England, France, and Spain all have master luthiers who have devoted their entire adult lives to their craft. Some of these guitars can take months to build and are true works of musical art, yet their prices are still less than most of these overmarketed cables. Intolerable, no? I guess not to the filthy rich audiophiles - my apologies to the filthy rich audiophiles for offending their delicate egos.
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