Who thinks $5K speaker cable really better than generic 14AWG cable?

I've got news for all of you cable addicts. 

The founder of Monster Cable said he realized that audio nuts would pay a fortune for "high end audio cable" so he founded a company based on that premise, creating products to meet this demand. He says that in reality the expensive cable makes little to no difference in the overall sound. You might as well use lamp chord. 

Audio dealers and manufacturers these days are just a hustle, thanks no doubt in part to extreme income inequality. 

For example, I saw a pair of speakers in an audio showroom whose cabinet size was suspiciously similar to mine. I walked over to get a closer look. They were claimed to be a one-off by Shindo. The asking price was $33K. I asked the dealer if the driver - plainly visible, no grill cloth - was the old Altec Lansing 604C. He hemmed and hawed for a bit but I put my foot down and said that I have a pair of 604Cs at home and I am 200% certain these drivers are the very same. My speakers, with cabs and the Mastering Lab crossovers cost $3.3K, not $33K!

He relented and by that time I had attracted a crowd. 

Some poor sucker bought these speakers a week later. 

Btw, the wires that connect the crossovers to the speaker terminals in the otherwise still fantastic sounding 694Cs - hey, good enough for Shindo - is definitely not $1K per foot. Cheap, very thin copper wire. 

unreceivedogma wrote,

"I’ve got news for all of you cable addicts.

The founder of Monster Cable said he realized that audio nuts would pay a fortune for "high end audio cable" so he founded a company based on that premise, creating products to meet this demand. He says that in reality the expensive cable makes little to no difference in the overall sound. You might as well use lamp chord."

Uh, hate to burst your bubble but Monster Cable, at least initially, was inexpensive cable, not expensive cable. Hel-loo! The attraction was that Monster Cable was THICK and you could see the thick copper through the clear jacket, which are both actually excellent ideas, you know, given the propensities of audiophiles.

After trying many brands of cables for my Infinity Irs Betas the ones that sound by far the best are the ones i made with 8 gauge magnet wire. I did some blind testing with a few friends and they all picked the homemade cables. 

So Doug Sax of Mastering Lab fame used ordinary wire???? This is blasphemy.

I love audiogon. It is a great, trusted, and reliable service. I have bought and sold a couple of items over the years. The forum can be a great resource, however I thoroughly enjoy reading these types of threads purely for the entertainment value. Absolute and total insanity!!!! My interest in home audio has evolved from buying mass market and then boutique gear to building my own amps and speakers. Not only is Radio Shack wire sufficient for most applications but thin, ugly, brown lamp cord from Home Depot is a great option as well. I defer to the Audio Critic and lie #1 from his "10 Biggest Lies in Audio."

"1. The Cable Lie
Logically this is not the lie to start with because cables are accessories, not primary audio components. But it is the hugest, dirtiest, most cynical, most intelligence-insulting and, above all, most fraudulently profitable lie in audio, and therefore must go to the head of the list.

The lie is that high-priced speaker cables and interconnects sound better than the standard, run-of-the-mill (say, Radio Shack) ones. It is a lie that has been exposed, shamed, and refuted over and over again by every genuine authority under the sun, but the tweako audio cultists hate authority and the innocents can’t distinguish it from self-serving charlatanry.

The simple truth is that resistance, inductance, and capacitance (R, L, and C) are the only cable parameters that affect performance in the range below radio frequencies. The signal has no idea whether it is being transmitted through cheap or expensive RLC. Yes, you have to pay a little more than rock bottom for decent plugs, shielding, insulation, etc., to avoid reliability problems, and you have to pay attention to resistance in longer connections. In basic electrical performance, however, a nice pair of straightened-out wire coat hangers with the ends scraped is not a whit inferior to a $2000 gee-whiz miracle cable. Nor is 16-gauge lamp cord at 18-cents a foot. Ultrahigh-priced cables are the biggest scam in consumer electronics, and the cowardly surrender of nearly all audio publications to the pressures of the cable marketers is truly depressing to behold."