Ddraudt,
Sad Sabai with the empty life here. I believe my points are well made regarding the price/performance ratio of cables. If I look at my system and consider the components, the tweaks and accessories, and the cables that have visited my home, the worst price/performance ratio has consistently been with cables.
In the case of High Fidelity where you have high-performance cables, and this goes for so many other cable makers, some that I have already cited in this thread, the prices are outrageous. I mean $12,900 for a single power cord and $7,500 for a pair of speaker wires? Give me a break. If you are OK with this sort of thing, no skin off my teeth. But $50,000 for 4 power cords?
There is a very attractive alternative. You can make your own high-performance cables for a tiny fraction of the cost -- with stunning results. Why not give it a go if money is a concern? There is so little to lose and so much to gain. In fact, you can make a whole roomful of your own cables for a fraction of the cost of a single over-priced cable -- including neodymium magnets that run about 50 cents apiece. Ozzy and I have worked on this with great success after owning multi-thousand dollar cables. And I'm quite sure there are others out there doing the same thing who prefer to sit on the sidelines, understandably.
Now, it's true that some components may also be somewhat over-priced. But you usually get pretty good value if you choose your components carefully. You will need to change components a lot less often than cables if you purchase wisely.
It is also true that some tweaks and accessories may carry outlandish prices -- such as Synergistic Research HFTs that go for $60 a pop. But in this case, you can also make your own. I got some of the ideas from Ozzy with HFTs and mine work great. I also make proprietary DIY tweaks that are stunning. So, with some imagination and not too many dollars you can really stretch the audio budget.
This is a concern for me because I live overseas and buy and try can be very expensive. OK, I have a pretty liberal audio budget. But why the heck should I just thrown money at the audio thing when I can do better by using my imagination -- and have a bit of fun, as well. There is nothing more satisfying than making your own speaker wires or power cords that allow you to sell off multi-thousand dollar cables that were performing really, really well.
Sad Sabai with the empty life here. I believe my points are well made regarding the price/performance ratio of cables. If I look at my system and consider the components, the tweaks and accessories, and the cables that have visited my home, the worst price/performance ratio has consistently been with cables.
In the case of High Fidelity where you have high-performance cables, and this goes for so many other cable makers, some that I have already cited in this thread, the prices are outrageous. I mean $12,900 for a single power cord and $7,500 for a pair of speaker wires? Give me a break. If you are OK with this sort of thing, no skin off my teeth. But $50,000 for 4 power cords?
There is a very attractive alternative. You can make your own high-performance cables for a tiny fraction of the cost -- with stunning results. Why not give it a go if money is a concern? There is so little to lose and so much to gain. In fact, you can make a whole roomful of your own cables for a fraction of the cost of a single over-priced cable -- including neodymium magnets that run about 50 cents apiece. Ozzy and I have worked on this with great success after owning multi-thousand dollar cables. And I'm quite sure there are others out there doing the same thing who prefer to sit on the sidelines, understandably.
Now, it's true that some components may also be somewhat over-priced. But you usually get pretty good value if you choose your components carefully. You will need to change components a lot less often than cables if you purchase wisely.
It is also true that some tweaks and accessories may carry outlandish prices -- such as Synergistic Research HFTs that go for $60 a pop. But in this case, you can also make your own. I got some of the ideas from Ozzy with HFTs and mine work great. I also make proprietary DIY tweaks that are stunning. So, with some imagination and not too many dollars you can really stretch the audio budget.
This is a concern for me because I live overseas and buy and try can be very expensive. OK, I have a pretty liberal audio budget. But why the heck should I just thrown money at the audio thing when I can do better by using my imagination -- and have a bit of fun, as well. There is nothing more satisfying than making your own speaker wires or power cords that allow you to sell off multi-thousand dollar cables that were performing really, really well.