My OP was not intended to sell anyone one on Stealth cables. Although I cannot hide my prejudice toward them. My goal was to give an example IME of the value of cables. Does it not go without saying that Serguei and I limited our trial rooms to the very high end ones with ICs that retail for close to or much more than $6k?Research and development of cables is the same as any component and, perhaps, even more so. It is not the case that a solid 24 carat gold cable transfers of signal best. Cables like top line Stealth take years to develop and have extremely sophisticated architecture.
Would I pay $6k for a cable or any component, no. AG clearly changed the Audio industry. However, there is a significant slice of the market that does buy retail and will pay top dollar. Regarding “room runners”, I use this term IME doing two California Audio Shows. “Running a room” is the person primarily responsible for speaking and selling in that room.