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Chinese fake cables How fake, how good?

I have noted a number of warnings about cheap Chinese fake cables on this site but curiosity led me to the Aliexpress site where I found a number of presumably fake big name cables from predominantly Cardas, Nordost and Siltech at about 15% of the USA or Australian price. I found Cardas Clear Light interconnects at about US$100 and decided what the heck let's give them a try at that price. Before buying I asked the seller the daft question as to whether they were genuine and got the reply that they were an OEM and constructed the interconnects from genuine Cardas cables and connectors. They arrived in a plastic bag rather than the Cardas box , not a great start but the cables looked real, and when connected, much to my surprise, they sounded really good. After 100hours or so burn in they sounded great and better than the Nordost Quatre Fils I had been using. I then took them to an Australian hi end dealer who sold real Cardas and asked rather ingenuously whether my cables were the real deal. The dealer would not commit but agreed to compare them to the real thing on a set up costing at a guess around A$100,00. Neither I nor the sales person could tell any difference so he then tried them against the Cardas Clear. Then there was some difference, not extreme but subtle, and certainly IMO not worth the price difference even if you bought the genuine Cardas Clear Light. So are these cables really fake and even if they are given my experience they are well worth a try. Maybe I'll try Nordost Odin or Siltech 770i next.
128x128mazian
gawdbless's avatar
gawdbless
1,235 posts
 
Thank goodness no one is faking Monster cables.....
astelmaszek
125 posts
 
And yet somehow Geoff makes his own artificial atoms in a little condo.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
It’s not really that hard, astlmostzal, all you need is a hole and a bunch of electrons. Anyone could do it. Even you.
divesh
9 posts
 
As someone already posted, some of the stuff coming out of China is junk. I bought some bulk 'furutech' rca cable and it was truly junk. Looked crap, quality crap, sounded crap - ended up in the bin. But, there are gems out there too, as my experience with the nordost cable leads me to believe. Do your homework, and buy from trusted China seller, and you'll surprise yourself. 
I never expected my $300 nordost cable to beat the $10000 genuine article, but it competes with everything I've tried up to $2000. I'm happy with that. 
Anyway, why are we worried about China?The real elephant in the room is Taiwan - I can't speak highly enough of the quality of the components coming out of this place. In my opinion, they are the worlds best in manufacturing individual hifi components at the moment. The current equivalent of where Japan was in the 1970s and 1980s.
jacksky
102 posts
 
So many aspects of products fall in the gray area.
I doubt audio cables made in China were ever assembled by child labor, doesn’t make business sense for the Chinese employer. And if we frown on forced labor, weren’t most license plates in the US made by prison labor?
as for the profit margins versus the material cost, compare to the fashion industry. A High fashion pair of shoes costs a lot because of many factors not related to the product cost.  Like they purposely want to be exclusive to certain people in order to maintain a high profile so they can continue to command ridiculously high prices. It’s only when you have huge volume that mega retailers bring costs down to grab a larger market share.  don’t you think a designer handbag would come down tremendously in cost if one of the Marts thould they could turn over a gazillion of them?
as for the different quality levels of knock offs, REFLEX watches can be had in China for ten bucks that will work for a month, forty bucks and it will work for six months, 120 bucks and it will actually look decent, 800 bucks and it will be indistinguishable from real to a consumer or 1600 bucks (stillonly 25% of the cost of real one) and the Zurich factory would be impressed at the quality of the knock off.
you can’t possibly know what quality level of know off you are getting without real feedback from previous purchasers, not staged fake feedback posted by the supplier.  
The ethical aspect is clear, it is not ethical to use someone else’s name and associated positive reputation.  Period. Can this be controlled? Yeah, to the same extent illegal drugs are , about 3-5%.
is there an ethical work around? Sure. Advertise that your cable is 99% the same as the brand’s product at 25% of the cost, or something along that line.  Done that way in auto parts all the time.

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