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
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"I never said you did say there’s NO difference between cables. What you keep saying, though, is that there is NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE in sound quality between very expensive cables and inexpensive cables. And you yourself provided evidence to the contrary when you linked the blind test that showed otherwise."

Sigh.  You just don't get it do you? How many times do I have to repeat myself.  CORRELATION, CORRELATION, CORRELATION!!!
You're a horrible troll.  
"In my experience I have generally found the correlation coefficient between intelligence and economic success to be greater the zero."

Watts, do you really talk like this?  Have you ever kissed a girl?
"dracule1 - why don't you contact the cable manufacturers whose products you find disagreeable & ask them to justify their prices...? Then you can post the response..."

Infection, funny that you ask. I did do that at an audio show. One manufacturer was dumbfounded that I even asked the question and fumbled to give me an answer.  In the end, he said something to the effect of his cables being the Mercedes of cables.  Righhhhhhhhhht.  Others will try to overwhelm you with their proprietary but unproven technology hoping you'll buy into it.

Then, I called a well known cable manucture who makes cables up to about $2000 to $3000. His most expensive power cord is about $900 for 1.5 meters.  I asked him what goes into $15,000 power cord. He is a metallurgist and an engineer. He basically told me he couldn't justify the cost of such power cord based on his knowledge of price of metals, insulators, cost of manufacture, advertising, and distribution.  Either he doesn't know what he's talking about, which I highly doubt because I own several of his power cords and would put them up against any PC, or there is a lot of price gauging in high end. He is not my friend, and I have no loyalty to him. I'm just his customer.
"Well, of course you can find cables that are much more expensive than your $4K room treatment; however, $4K is much more than most audiophiles spend on cables. Besides, your $4K pales in comparison to what better heeled audiophiles spend on room treatments. Ergo, your contention that one can obtain better results for a lot less money (than expensive cables) by employing things like room treatments is patently false."

Geoff, you're not even making sense. My $4k in room treatments has done more to improve the sound of my system than any $40k speaker cable or $10k interconnect I've auditioned.  I need a translator.  Or is this another one of your bad attempts at trolling? If you're claiming some audiophiles spending way more than myself in room treatments is proof that my contention is false, then you're one marble way from frontal lobe dementia.  You don't know much these audiophiles are spending, and you have no clue how much of an improvement the acoustic treatment is having relative to cables, especially given your idea of acoustic treatments is brass bowls, etc. Man, I thought you're smarter than this, but you disappointment me every time.

It's pretty obvious you have very little knowledge of room treatments given what you've sited as room treatments in you past comment. Go to GIK Acoustics site and other sources and educate yourself on scientically validated acoustic room treatment, which is one of the very few things in high end where one can actually CORRELATE  measurements with what we hear.  There's that pesky word you seem to have so much trouble understanding.