"Harry Lavo" wrote in message
...
"Bruce Abrams" wrote in message
news:Mx_ac.156391$Cb.1611810@attbi_s51...
*snip*

If you will lay your prejudices aside, The Absolute Sound has run a survey
of speaker cables in the last two issues (Feb/Mar, Apr/May just out).
Previously they did a survey of interconnects. Both surveys done by Paul
Seydor and Neil Gader. To quote part of Paul's summary: "... Let me also
emphasize that our capsule descriptions have for the most part *really
magnified* the differences among these cables. The reality is that it
typically required keen, rather exhausting, and decidedly *not* enjoyable
concentration to ferret out most of the individual characteristics we've
attempted to describe. Could we tell which cable was connected up, say, a
few hours after a session or the next morning, if we didn't know? Maybe
with the cables that fell to either extreme of the tonal-balance spectrum,
but, as in our interconnect survey, I'd not want to place my hard-earned
money on it...." (TAS, *Loudspeaker Cable Survey, Part Two*, April/May
2004
pp 63-64). BTW they included a 14gauge Home Depot cable derived from an
outside power cord in the survey and it did pretty well.

This group's objectivists might want to consider that they have continued
to
attack their own fantasia, while the audio world has moved on.

If the audio world has moved on, why are there still companies selling
obscenely priced speaker cables that are indistinguishable from 12 guage zip
cord? The answer is that they haven't really moved on. Here's how I read
Paul's summary...We can't really tell the difference between cables, but
there must be some difference because nobody would spend that much money on
cables if there wasn't, and if there really aren't any differences Kimber,
Transparent, MIT, etc. no longer have any reason for existing and if they
don't exist they can't buy ad space and if they don't buy ad space...(NB I
don't believe anyone would write a good review of bad equipment just to save
the advertising revenue. That is not the same as allowing perceptual bias
to infect a review by not controlling for it.)