Good, Neutral, Reasonably Priced Cables?

This is better than the censorship wars!

I suggest an Audiogon get together *party* wearing moniker nametags, be kinda interesting.

Boy, it sure is refreshing to see some other people taking the beating, and not me, for a change.

Maybe a good suggestion would be for everyone to get rid of their speakers altogether, and replace them with oscilloscopes, so we could all watch the happy waveforms of our favorite music dancing on the screen, and continuously analyzing the distortion products, instead of listening to music.

Now that sounds like fun.

I can just imagine the Audiogon posts then:
"How come my oscilloscope shows more distortion product when I use speaker cable B, than A?"
Or my favorite:
Should we really be using speaker cables on our oscilloscopes, or would it be better to use oscilloscope cables instead?"
Or:
"Does anybody else like to watch steady-state test tone wave patterns?"
Or, the ever-popular:
"Where can I get a cheap cable that will show good waveforms on my 'scope?"

Somehow, I manage to get enjoyable listening, even without ever hooking up a single piece of test equipment to my system. Do I need a 12-step program to release me from the errors of my ways? Or maybe I should have said a "12-step function selector switch?"
:^)

Optimistically speaking though, maybe someday our testing methods will include actually listening to the music. That would be a great day indeed. I find it rather humorous that the only testing method that "does not count" is listening with the human ears in your own listening room. And that there is "no error" in testing regimes, and all error is in the ear or perceptions of the ears, because science is god and cannot be wrong, or more accurately, wrongly applied.

Technology is a means to an end, nothing more. That "end" is listening to the music. If the technology does not improve your listening enjoyment, or even detracts from it, then it is useless. Getting a perfect scope pattern, if it doesn't translate into better enjoyment, is not the goal.

You can't "spec" or "measure" your way to audio nirvana. Audio nirvana is an emotional place which is provided by the emotional content of the music. There is no "emotional content meter" available. Good luck with your other meters.

You can "extrapolate" specs all you want, and try to "presume" that "this" measurement will mean "that" level of enjoyment, but in the end it is "in the ears" and "in the emotions", my friend. That, you cannot measure with a meter, you can only experience it, and THAT is "where it's at".

You can take 2 audio tubes that measure and spec exactly the same, but may come from a different manufacturer, and they sound noticeably different. Why? Do we want to dissect these tubes, and perform sub-atomic testing, so that ultimately we can learn that "matter" and "energy" and "space" are all actually "one", and we have no idea what is at the basis of it all? Maybe you do. But I don't. I want to hear a nice sounding audio system that stirs my soul with music.

What if you found 2 different cables that had all the same measurements exactly, and sounded different? What would you do then? I'll tell you what you'd do. You'd have to accept that your measurements are incomplete, and flawed in concept and application, and that they only tell you rudimentary things. Then, you'd be starting out on the same road that many of us started on long ago. It's in the listening.

Rumour has it the original poster who wanted to recable his entire system without going nuts has committed suicide.

Phew! Sean, Robert, thanks for the eye-exercises. Sean, just gotta disagree with your statement re the inappropriate use of Teflon (or other low DA insulation) in PCs. Whereas one would think that bandwidth constriction is useful for AC propagation, accomplishing it via "dirty dielectrics" is NOT beneficial. As with signal cables, the empirical evidence (our ears) DOES indicate that here too Teflon "sounds" more transparent, less "phasey", etc. No, I can't explain it. But hundreds of A'goners who use my cheap Teflon-insulated PCs agree.
OK, maybe it's the geometry, shielding...whatever. But at $40-70 who cares? Thanks for the Goertz analysis. Ern