[Audio Empire]

On Thu, 2 Dec 2010 05:46:13 -0800, C. Leeds wrote
(in article ):

On 12/1/2010 5:57 PM, Audio Empire wrote (about high-priced audio cables):


...you'd be surprised at how many people have been duped into buying these
hyper-expensive cables thinking that they actually "do" something.

Okay, I'll ask: how many people have been duped? Why don't we hear from
them in this group, or elsewhere? Please tell us.


Well, obviously I don't have any actual sales figures, but the sheer number
of companies making and selling expensive cables indicate that it must be a
lucrative market, or they wouldn't make so many different brands. SOMEBODY is
buying them, surely.

...there is NOTHING that one
can do to a speaker cable to make it worth $6800, even if it were made of
gold.

That's your opinion, and you're entitled to it.

Lots of things in audio are opinions. This just doesn't happen to be one of
them. Physics and DBTs both tell us that cables have NO sound, indeed cannot
have any sound unless they are something else other than just interconnects
and speaker cables. Of course if I make an expensive "cable" with a big
metal, wood, or epoxy box in the middle of it full of capacitors, resistors
and inductors, I'm no longer selling cables, am I? I'm selling in-line
filters, which of course DO have a sound of their own. But that's a different
story.

Now, to make an odious analogy, Physics also tells us that one cannot flap
their arms and fly like a bird, either, but if you insist on climbing to the
top of the barn and leaping off, I certainly cannot stop you. I do feel,
however, that it is my duty as a fellow human being to point out to you that
if you insist on jumping off the end of the barn roof, and flapping your arms
wildly, that you will likely die. I likewise feel it's my duty to tell people
less technically schooled than I am that fancy cables are snake oil, and that
they're wasting their money by buying them. If, after understanding that the
cables will not enhance their stereo system's sound in any way shape or form,
they decide to go ahead and purchase them, then I have no problem with that.
I figure that they probably have their reasons and those reasons obviously
have little to do with the performance of their audio systems.

I also feel that magazines like 'Stereophile' and 'The Absolute Sound', both
of whom foster this mythology are doing their readership a grave injustice,
by proliferating the notion that cables, mere CONDUCTORS, actually affect
sound. I have seen only one magazine, a British one at that, actually step
forward and say that the idea of cable sound is patent nonsense and that the
fact that cables and interconnects have no sound can be easily proved by both
mathematics and double-blind listening tests. Kudos to them.


You're also free to
enjoy mocking those who buy these cables. Some others apparently find
value in these sorts of products, however.

Actually, they probably don't. Like those who bought tonics and elixirs from
the old 19th century medicine show salesmen, people who buy expensive cables
probably believe that the cables make a difference due to expectational bias
(These cables cost $6800/pair. They had BETTER improve the sound of my
system). But alas, these cables won't even give the the buyer that feeling of
well-being that they often got from the medicine show salesman's product,
because the cables aren't 25% alcohol! 8^)