TimT wrote: > That's my question: what does $300 to $500 for interconnects buy Mr. A? > If "higher-priced cables = better sound" is audio-voodoo, why should > John A spend $500? Why not spend $50?
Let me correct a slight problem with your statement: "higher-priced cables = better sound" is not really where the voodoo lies but rather it is more complicated than that simple equation. To understand where today's misunderstanding about cables comes from one needs to go back to the origin of the high end cable industry. Back in the early days of after market audio cables, these after market cables were completing against the standard run of the mill freebie cables that came bundled with just about every piece of audio equipment. Super cheap and very poorly made, these freebie cables more often than not were the cause of many problems people experienced with their audio systems as the cables failed, whether by not making a good and solid connection between equipment or because they simply started to fall apart or because these did not minimum requirements for the equipment involved. To add to the problem the replacement cables available in the local electronics store were often no better than the freebie cables. By introducing replacement cables which offered better connections and solid construction and which met the minimum requirements for the equipment involved the problems caused by those cheap freebie cables were solved. It was less about how much better one system sounded and more about how a poorly functioning part of one's system had been improved. Where things started to go off the rails was when some very clever marketing person realized that if people were willing to actually buy better functioning (not sounding) cables perhaps they could be made to buy even more expensive cables in the hope of further improving the sound of their audio system. And so the very profitable high end cable business came to be. The fallacy in high end cables is that while it may be true that replacing cheap, poorly made and improperly functioning freebie cables with well made and properly functioning cables will make an audio system function (and therefore "sound") better, replacing these well made and properly functioning cables with even more expensive cables does nothing to 1) improve the functioning of an audio system and 2) does nothing to improve the sound of an audio system. Think of cable as piping in a water supply system. In an audio system each piece of equipment represents a variable load but with a known upper limit, much like a sink in that one can open the faucet just a little or all the way. When opened all the way a maximum amount of water will flow but that maximum amount is determined by the faucet and not the piping supplying the faucet. Similar to a power amp - the amount of current needed by the power amp is determined by the amp itself and not by the power cord. Now if the pipe supplying the faucet is undersized then the faucet will not be able to produce the maximum flow. But if the pipe supplying the faucet is correctly sized then the faucet will able to produce the maximum flow. Making the pipe supplying the faucet bigger than the correctly sized piping will not enable the faucet to produce more than it's inherent maximum flow. The same is true for audio equipment (i.e. electrical flow) in that once the correct cable size is reached any larger cable will not improve the system. In objectivist terms this means that once a properly sized and functioning cable is provided that's all that is needed. Unfortunately when there is money to be made there is also plenty of dishonesty, such as when some fancy USB cable is compared to USB cable that does not meet the minimum required specifications, or when a $1000 cable is claimed to sound better than a $50 cable - purely subjective and total nonsense. Living Rm: Transporter-SimAudio pre/power amps-Vandersteen 3A Sign. & sub Home Theater: Touch-Marantz HTR-Energy Veritas 2.1 & Linn sub Computer Rm: Touch-Headroom Desktop w/DAC-Aragon amp-Energy Veritas 2.1 & Energy sub Bedroom: Touch-HR Desktop w/DAC-Audio Refinement amp-Energy Veritas 2.0 Guest Rm: Duet-Sony soundbar Garage: SB3-JVC compact system Controls: iPeng; SB Controller; Moose & Muso Server: LMS 7.9 on dedicated windows 10 computer w/2 Drobos 'Last.fm' (http://www.last.fm/user/jazzfann/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ralphpnj's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10827 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=105173 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
