AudioBanter.com - View Single Post - Comments regarding: Cables, Hearing, Stuff!!

(Michael Scarpitti) wrote:

(Nousaine) wrote in message
...
lcw999 wrote:

I still wonder why some amp/cable manufacturer with nominally competent
electrical performance can't produce a bias controlled listening test
that
shows their products have any sound of their own?

It's a quandry. So many want me to "believe" but when I say "OK show me
...
when you don't know the answers in advance" --- no one can. I'm not
thinking
that 'unmeasurable but real' differences fit into the equation in a
meaningful
way.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that top-tier products like
cables have little 'sound' of their own, and that it's the cheaper
stuff that does. Ergo, the better the quality, the more closely
perfection is approached, and the subtler the differences. Comparisons
between two brands of high-end cables are less likely to show
differences than comparisons between cheap cables and high-end cables.

Iszzzat so! In the 90s I conducted 2 separate bias controlled wire-sound tests
in audiophiles home systems (one an enthusiast and one an audio salesman) who
both claimed that their particular wire was substantially better sounding than
zip-cord. Both had several hundred dollars of speaker cabling in their systems.
Interestingly neither was able to reliably differentiate their reference
cabling from $0.18 a foot zipcord. I then repeated this with a 20-year old
female college student comparing the zip cord to an 8-foot set of $990 Tara
Labs RSC speaker wires. She was also unable to tell them apart.

It's also intersting to think about what a wire "manufacturer" actually
"makes." For example the Tara Labs RSC (a rectangular shaped copper wire in a
translucent casing) was recognized by a member at an audio club ...."I know
that wire; we used that to restrap starter motors when I worked at ....."

I've visited Transparent Audio Marketing in New Hampshire and I didn't see
anything being manufactuered there except for network boxes and terminations.
The "wire" was in an old barn wound on cable spools with New England Wire and
Cable stamped on them. IOW wire "manufacturers" don't make wire. At best they
terminate them.

I'm guessing that companies such as Monster Cable may not even have to
warehouse cables but simply have them drop-shipped from the manufacturer
directly to the vendor from the manufacturer/packaging house. It's all BS but
technically brilliant marketing.