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
What is the definition of an Audiophile? I should have thought about this before as Wikipedia seems to do a nice job with the definition below:

An audiophile is a person enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction.[1]

Audiophile values may be applied at all stages of music reproduction: the initial audio recording, the production process, and the playback, which is usually in a home setting.

A key goal of audiophiles is to capture the experience of a live musical performance in a room with good acoustics, and reproduce it at home. It is widely agreed that this is very difficult and that even the best-regarded recording and playback systems rarely, if ever, achieve it.[2][3]


Almarg wrote,

""TL" is an obvious reference to a certain brand of very expensive cables, if that isn’t clear. "Cables with fantastic magnets" is an obvious reference to another brand of very expensive cables."

I’m hip. I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday.

almarg also wrote,

"Each of those cables is the subject of a very long-running and lengthy thread here, and in each of those threads the most prominent advocate of those cables is an individual who at times has been claimed by certain posters in the thread to be, um, insincere."

Your conclusion is a judgement call, I’d opine, as to whether someone is being over zealous, insincere or dishonest, or shilling for someone. But I actually don’t think one can discern the difference between enthusiasm and insincerity or even shilling on the Internet so easily any more than one can detect irony or sarcasm is certain posts.

Almarg also wrote,

"Or to use some of my words that you quoted, to be "attempting to disguise an interest in promoting a product." In other words, to NOT be a "genuine audiophile," with "genuine" meaning something along the lines of "sincere," as I said."

Actually, the more I think about it there is no prohibition against promoting a product on this audio forum. I mean other than a manufacturer promoting his own product out of the blue.

Cheers,

G. Kait, Machina Dynamica


almarg
6,490 posts
06-27-2016 8:34am
Geoff, the relevant part of his post was:
The problem is, there is too much misinformation/aka: b**s*** posted on this forum about TL and cables with fantastic magnets inside by posters who every man and his dog on here knows are NOT [emphasis added] genuine audiophiles.

One man’s misinformation or disinformation is another man’s information. It is one of the challenges of high end audio to figure out what is the truth in a minefield of misinformation and disinformation. I do not think any of us has a lock on what is bs and what is not bs on all topics, including the topic of exotic cables.

Cheers,

Geoff Kait
Looks like those cables will come in real handy this winter when they cut off my heat.

- Super flexible even in sub-zero temperatures

ta ta