I really like this post, kudos to all for not letting this degenerate as so many posts have! I think it is really telling, as jcmorgan notes, that none of the people truly in the know are talking....with all the mfrs and dealers who are members of audiogon who generally chirp in missing, I think that says everything we need to know about justification of cables, there truly is no real, definitive reason except that they charge absolutely what the market will bear.
The crux of the matter for me is, and I suspect the originator of this post, the frustration of hearing differences in cables, wanting the better cables, but knowing deep down we are not getting relative value to the other things in our system, or for that matter, the other things in life. One can buy a brand new Civic for what many of have just in cables in our systems. I bet speakers, turntables, amps all follow a 4 or 5 to 1 rule, in other words that the cost of actual manufacture per piece is one fourth to one fifth the actual retail list, whereas cables are probably around 1/20th or less than the retail sale price.
So obviously a few of us with various sytems should get together and start a cable business, write off our systems as R&D, as well as our music, and start a cable companies. WE would have no additional "r&d" costs as we already have the test beds!!! Our cables then should be much less expensive than our competitors, and we can clean up. Who's with me????
Cheers!!
Chris
