New $24,000 inter-connect


I just saw a new Audiogon listing for a $24,000 inter-connect by Matthew Bond (Tara Labs). How many ya gonna order?
128x128bdp24
The autopac rules and regs supplied the designations for ’made in the usa’ or ’made in canada’.

That number, is 10% or more of the whole manufacturer’s VALUE, in cash expense/costs --attached.

That a PC can be entirely built out of Chinese and Asian parts at $1000, but assembled, tested and software installed by the ’manufacturer’ at $101 at factory floor costs (assigned as a number by the manufacturer), all done in America or Canada.

This allows the company to attach a ’made in America’, or ’made in Canada’ sticker. 100% legal and correct in the spirit of the law and letter of the law.

Otherwise all the cars you drive would very much be of foreign origin. Any Ford, or Chevy, etc.

That’s what Tara was basically doing, but were raided, and the us customs was probably egged on, repeatedly... by competition who wanted them to go away.

The audio business can get ugly and has been quite ugly at times.

However, one can’t just remove a label, put the item in a box and call it ’made in America’.

One has to prove those (minimum 10%) expenses as a correctly derived reality, if asked to do so. It’s an honour system and runs decently enough. Like the RoHS compliance system for the EU.
I could care less what the rich blow their big bucks on. The problem I have is the fact that the sham of $20K+ IC cables is an insult to the legitimate manufactures and designers of fine audio gear, that's price tag has some relation, in actual value, to the price charged.
It's my fear that sound engineering and equitable good products will give way to bogus claims and inflated prices and that will become the new norm of the fading HEA.

As an avid outdoors-man, I have spent a good deal of $$$ over the years, to buy quality gear. Along with expensive fire arms and scopes, one of my favorite items is a pair of $2,200. Swarovski EL binoculars - now valued at about $3,000.00. Some of the best field optics in the world are made by Swarovski and Lica and unlike magic cables, their products have a lifetime warranty and hold their value. In either case their best binoculars and field scopes (coveted by outdoors-men and professional field workers around the world) range from around $2.5K - $3.5K for binocs and $3K - $4K for field scopes. Doubtful that either of these fine companies would ever stoop to the level of some audio cable makers and come up with the idea they can build a pair of glasses and claim to have optics coated with graphene, moon dust and dark matter, so they can stick a $24K price tag on them to satisfy the egos of the rich......Jim 

That's the thing, it's all relative I originally went from a Radio Shack interconnect to a $100 Duelund. That's a multiplier of about 50x.

Is it better than the Radio Shack cable?
@ketchup 
That's the thing, it's all relative I originally went from a Radio Shack interconnect to a $100 Duelund. That's a multiplier of about 50x.

It's only relative to a point. Beyond that point, it becomes a lie and a sham.
Dueland's $100.00 un-shielded cable is actually quite good for a reasonable cost and their $120.00 shielded cable is also decent, if you need shielding. Shielding on IC cables usually does more harm than good and the layers and layers of fancy wrapping and garbage that the high dollar cable dudes sleeve over their China made, mediocre conductors, is a farce. There are few 1M ICs that would sound much better than what you have and 0 that would sound 2,400 times better.
Rest well knowing you have a quite decent set of cables and enjoy the music......Jim

The percentage argument is a common one, but ignores an important issue. A $100 cable is 10 times the price of a $10 one, the dollar amount of that difference being $90. A $1,000 cable is also 10 times the price of a $100 one, but the dollar amount of THAT difference is $900. The $90 and $900 dollar amount of difference bear the same percentage relationship to each other as do the prices of the two groups of cables, but my opinion is the $810 difference makes the cases quite different.

I have no idea how much a system would need to cost to make a single $24,000 cable proportionately justifiable. And that assumes the cable's price is proportionate to it's sound quality, a mighty big assumption.