7500 for USED cables? Are they joking?

Paul and Sean, I think your both right. A lot of the recordings today by the "factory" studios may indeed care less of the quality than the budget/ profit. The sound of these recordings is placed in history and will never be better than the least component used to create it.

To me the fact that the "Audiophile" labels exist and sound as good as they do is some sort of proof to that. If the master tape is good (often the case in older classic and jazz recordings) then the better equipment will show this quality. If the playback equipment is lesser however the final presentation will also be less.

I guess it depends on your source, if you listen to a lot of the newly recorded "music" from today's mass production studios than forget wire, just sit back and enjoy. If however you have a lot of "audiophile" labels, recorded as purely as possible, then I would recommend using the best possible equipment to take full advantage of the potential left by the studio.

This discussion of cables bores me as a topic, but draws me in with the hope that new audio lovers don't get led astray with wrongful thinking.

I too have auditioned over 40 cables, to claim there is no difference is simple naive and ill informed. This site deserved better.

J.D.

Whoa! This-here thread got away from me in a hurry. I don't know whether to apologize or thank you, so I'll do both.

Being an "outsider" again with old but somewhat fresh eyes for the jargon, I've got two observations to make that some of you may not see because you've kept up with the literature since I dropped out.

First, the WONDERFUL spoof on fishing line actually hooked me. That's really scary. It means somewhere in the dark recesses of my slowly withering pea-brain, cable claims from a decade ago are still lodged and producing a Pavlovian response in my subconscious. Driving to work, I found myself actually wondering if $3,000 fishing line might work -- I'm not kidding! -- even while my conscious, semi-professional self was screaming "If you think that ridiculous thought one more time, I'm driving this car off the next bridge!"

Second, why hasn't the industry put its efforts into figuring out "why" one piece of wire works better than another? I mean, designing a really great amp, tuner, speaker or CD player takes a bit of effort and some genuine smarts. Hasn't anyone wanted to design an active component or an ability within existing components that would give you exactly the same great sound as the most expensive cable using any conductor of electricity? It's got to be easier (and cheaper!) than buying and testing high-end cables until you find something that sort of works better than something else. This isn't rocket science folks (and even if it were, you can hire rocket scientists in Russia full-time these days for about $1200 a month each).

I would think that speaker and component manufacturers would be interested in being the first to claim their units didn't need fussy, expensive cables to sound great.

By the way, yes, yes, I do have about $600 (used) in speaker cables in my system. I'm not a complete Luddite, OK?

You all are the most intelligent, funny and sensible audiophiles (by and large) that I've ever encountered. Thank you for the great entertainment and information!

Respectfully,

Mark Hubbard

Mark, there are manufacturers that already make the claim of their components NOT being cable sensitive i.e. all cables sound and measure the same within the confines of their system. The first that come to mind are Krell ( with their CAST system )and Van Alstine. Sean
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By default components shouldn't be a cable-sencitive at all but there again plays the marketing side.
Some of the manufacturers will advice you to use only audiophile grade cables and some are fine with pro-grade or even RadioShack.

Mark: I'd add Dunlavy to Sean's list. (He even admits his own cables don't sound any better than anybody else's!) But I suspect most component manufacturers would see no value in trying to unconvince audiophiles of something they're convinced of. Besides, the proof is there that most (note that I said most) gear doesn't require specialized cables--if you want to accept that proof. But as we know, many audiophiles do not (as is their right). I don't see what else science could do to convince them.