Regarding Rick Schultz and all the hoopla around High Fidelity cables. How much imagination and how much money does it take to put a magnet in a cable? Not very much. I'm no Albert Einstein and I have been using neodymium magnets in cables for years.
High Fidelity says the whole difference is where the magnets are placed and only one cable genius knows how to do that -– and it's so special it is worthy of a patent. And then they say the geometry makes the whole difference with the inference that the average Joe could never hope to wrap his small mind around it all -- ah, the all-important geometry. Don't even try to understand it. Anyway, it's proprietary.
If you step out of the cable box and make your own cables you may find out what you read from cable makers is simply Cable Babble designed to get you to part with your hard-earned greenbacks. Can the average audiophile go up against 20 years of amazing knowledge from a professional cable maker? Absolutely. Ozzy proved it. I have a good chuckle when I read all the marketing and all the hoopla and all the cheerleaders in the background with their cable pompoms raised in unison.
Cable making is not quantum physics in spite of all the mystery that cable makers surround their trade with to bewitch the gullible. Cable making is simple mechanical engineering and empiricism -- in spite of all the Cable Babble marketing talk designed to convince you that you need to be Albert Cable Einstein to make a good cable -- or an extraordinary one.
Did you ever ask yourself the question, if all those cables offered on Audiogon are so great why are they on offer? Do all those discerning audiophile sellers just happen to be selling for a friend with a second audio room they are closing down? Just look at all the mediocre cables produced by all those genius Albert Cable Einstein makers -- the game-changing SX followed by the SX Super followed by the SX Ultra followed by the SX Reference. You can bet your life that ZX will be hard on the heels of SX with ZX Super and ZX Ultra and ZX Reference following in due course.
Cable makers are some of the biggest smoke and mirror salesmen I have ever seen. In the vast majority of cases the astronomical prices you will pay for "top" cables have no relation to the rewards reaped once you make your own cables for a small fraction of the price and compare. You may find yours make the others look pale by comparison -- and you will shake your head in disbelief.
Let's talk about speaker wires. I would bet if you make your own silver speaker wires as per Ozzy's formula or my formula you will come up with a gem for under $200 that will easily beat any multi-thousand dollar speaker wires from any of the much-lauded and frequently-reviewed "heavy hitters" including High Fidelity, Synergistic Research, Nordost, Tara and others, with all of their high-priced superlatives thrown in free of charge. The real heavy hitting is done in the marketing department. The name of the game is to become The Cable of the Month.
As Ozzy has so keenly observed, it is all about the conductor in spite of all the BS-baffles-brains marketing talk about special Magnetic Conduction technology (watch out for those capital letters), patents and patents pending, ground-breaking technology, reduced distortion from all that nasty "noise", signal flow, Litzes and ribbons, geometries and configurations, tuning bullets, improved tuning bullets, terminations, active shielding, dialectrics, OCC 99.999999999 copper, cryogenic treatment on campus, 10 years in the making. But there's nothing like the hallowed word "game-changer" to rivet the attention of hordes of audiophiles. Just what the marketing doctor ordered.
Cable makers will say anything to make you think you'll need jaw surgery when your bottom mandible ends up on the floor after you audition their latest cable. They will say absolutely anything to get you to part with your hard-earned greenbacks.
High Fidelity says the whole difference is where the magnets are placed and only one cable genius knows how to do that -– and it's so special it is worthy of a patent. And then they say the geometry makes the whole difference with the inference that the average Joe could never hope to wrap his small mind around it all -- ah, the all-important geometry. Don't even try to understand it. Anyway, it's proprietary.
If you step out of the cable box and make your own cables you may find out what you read from cable makers is simply Cable Babble designed to get you to part with your hard-earned greenbacks. Can the average audiophile go up against 20 years of amazing knowledge from a professional cable maker? Absolutely. Ozzy proved it. I have a good chuckle when I read all the marketing and all the hoopla and all the cheerleaders in the background with their cable pompoms raised in unison.
Cable making is not quantum physics in spite of all the mystery that cable makers surround their trade with to bewitch the gullible. Cable making is simple mechanical engineering and empiricism -- in spite of all the Cable Babble marketing talk designed to convince you that you need to be Albert Cable Einstein to make a good cable -- or an extraordinary one.
Did you ever ask yourself the question, if all those cables offered on Audiogon are so great why are they on offer? Do all those discerning audiophile sellers just happen to be selling for a friend with a second audio room they are closing down? Just look at all the mediocre cables produced by all those genius Albert Cable Einstein makers -- the game-changing SX followed by the SX Super followed by the SX Ultra followed by the SX Reference. You can bet your life that ZX will be hard on the heels of SX with ZX Super and ZX Ultra and ZX Reference following in due course.
Cable makers are some of the biggest smoke and mirror salesmen I have ever seen. In the vast majority of cases the astronomical prices you will pay for "top" cables have no relation to the rewards reaped once you make your own cables for a small fraction of the price and compare. You may find yours make the others look pale by comparison -- and you will shake your head in disbelief.
Let's talk about speaker wires. I would bet if you make your own silver speaker wires as per Ozzy's formula or my formula you will come up with a gem for under $200 that will easily beat any multi-thousand dollar speaker wires from any of the much-lauded and frequently-reviewed "heavy hitters" including High Fidelity, Synergistic Research, Nordost, Tara and others, with all of their high-priced superlatives thrown in free of charge. The real heavy hitting is done in the marketing department. The name of the game is to become The Cable of the Month.
As Ozzy has so keenly observed, it is all about the conductor in spite of all the BS-baffles-brains marketing talk about special Magnetic Conduction technology (watch out for those capital letters), patents and patents pending, ground-breaking technology, reduced distortion from all that nasty "noise", signal flow, Litzes and ribbons, geometries and configurations, tuning bullets, improved tuning bullets, terminations, active shielding, dialectrics, OCC 99.999999999 copper, cryogenic treatment on campus, 10 years in the making. But there's nothing like the hallowed word "game-changer" to rivet the attention of hordes of audiophiles. Just what the marketing doctor ordered.
Cable makers will say anything to make you think you'll need jaw surgery when your bottom mandible ends up on the floor after you audition their latest cable. They will say absolutely anything to get you to part with your hard-earned greenbacks.