What drives the cost of expensive cables (aside from markups) is the use of exotic materials and construction techniques. I think that the fundamental problem here is that there is little or no established science supporting a correlation between those materials and techniques and better sound.
And muddling the picture further is that many exotic cables are non-neutral by design, incorporating in some cases outlandish values of capacitance or inductance, or "network boxes" whose function is defined primarily by nonsensical techno-hype.
I don't think that one has to be an extreme cynic to feel that the manufacturers and sellers of exotic, expensive cables are taking advantage of our natural instinct to assume that more expensive = better, in selling products where there is little or no valid basis for that to be true. Other than, I should add, euphonic synergy (especially in the case of the non-neutral cables), which could most likely be duplicated at much lower cost if the designers were motivated to try to do so.
A quote from the Bill Whitlock paper I referenced in my earlier post in this thread (a paper which presents several fundamental reasons why cables CAN and DO sound different):
Regards,
-- Al
And muddling the picture further is that many exotic cables are non-neutral by design, incorporating in some cases outlandish values of capacitance or inductance, or "network boxes" whose function is defined primarily by nonsensical techno-hype.
I don't think that one has to be an extreme cynic to feel that the manufacturers and sellers of exotic, expensive cables are taking advantage of our natural instinct to assume that more expensive = better, in selling products where there is little or no valid basis for that to be true. Other than, I should add, euphonic synergy (especially in the case of the non-neutral cables), which could most likely be duplicated at much lower cost if the designers were motivated to try to do so.
A quote from the Bill Whitlock paper I referenced in my earlier post in this thread (a paper which presents several fundamental reasons why cables CAN and DO sound different):
Some audio experts believe audio is too important to be trusted to technology, and consequently, they dismiss all scientific methods, including double-blind tests. This attitude, combined with the widespread notion that more expensive products must be better, has opened the door to a flood of marketing hype and misinformation. Promotional white papers abound with pseudo-science buzz words, theoretical explanations based on absurd and fanciful physics, and new proprietary measurement techniques replete with previously unknown units of measure.
Regards,
-- Al