Cable curmudgeon

The reason I'm cable critical is because of the industry's long history of false claims and rampant over-charging. Yes, it is your right as an American to be ripped off. But to take that as a matter of pride just seems very weird to me. You want to pay the stupid money for a piece of wire be my guest!

Could not agree more. Beyond materials quality and build quality most of the cable company claims are just sales poetry. At a certain level, the difference between one quality bottle of Cabernet and another is in the flavor nuances. Not better than or worse. Just small differences that you may or may not notice or care much about. You can get far better sound from room treatments than you ever will by spending thousands or more on cables. People don't want to believe that they are as subject to confirmation bias as the next person. In this case it is the askew notion that more expensive cables are better than less expensive ones because of fanciful claims and higher prices. Oh if it only be so. BTW, super high-end cable company profit margins verge on the unethical-- as in, they are obscene. 

Free market society last I checked (unless you are in say Cuba or China). You are free to buy or not buy.

Free to lie to folks by making false or unprovable claims about your grossly over-priced products or free to be chump enough to fall for them, or both? 

The only obscene thing here is notion that making obscene profits is obscene. Come on man with all the crap going on now days you pick cables and profit to be obscene?

I guess you might not see the connection between societal breakdown and the pattern in this country, in particular, of ripping people off because you can (monopolies) or because you are often free to make specious claims about whatever it is you're shucking. Do you think that's what made America great? Or did it make you money? You sound offended so I'll guess the latter.

 Go blow in a flute. 

If I do, I sure wouldn't buy that flute, or an insurance policy, or even an overpriced piece of wire, from you. Anyone that revels in the glory of being able to sell anything to anybody at rip-off (obscene) prices should apply immediately for a sales or a marketing position at any large pharmaceutical firm. You're just what they're looking for, and I hear the pay's fabulous, far better than selling overpriced magic-juju wire.

Everyone is free to be ripped off. It's a free country. That's not my issue. Like I said, my issue is with bogus claims justifying stupid pricing. By all means, spend $10k on an interconnect and tell us all about the blacker backgrounds, better focus, soundstage depth, etc. But you won't be able to rank cables by how they sound in order of price beyond anything made with quality materials and build. You won't be able to tell the difference BY PRICE between a $200, $1500, and $5000 cable and rank them in order of cost because the $200 cable is not better or worse than the $5000 cable. 

I really didn’t mean to rile up the MAGA loving or the placebo-denying crowd by pointing out that no one can rank cable audio quality by price (or to promote communism). I’m just pointing out the obvious-- very expensive cables include obscene profit margins and that beyond a certain build and materials quality yield little interchangeable differences that cannot be ranked by price.

You might wonder what kind of system I have-- I use a SOTA Series VI (w/vacuum & mag-lev bearing) with Origin Live Silver mkIII arm, Soundsmith Hyperion cartridge, Musical Fidelity VINYL phone-pre, McCormack DNA Gold amp and preamp, Genesis III speakers+ Genesis Servo-12 subs, Morrow cables (3 series) - for the analog chain, + dedicated power circuits, all copper wiring/grounding.

I can easily hear the differences between my phono cartridges’, between my different phono preamps, changes in speaker positioning, room treatments, vibrations treatments, etc., and yeah, I have tried multiple cables from decent to very expensive, living with them for a while before coming to any conclusions. With cables it’s just trading one set of micro-differences for another with NO relationship between price and ultimate sonic quality-- and frankly, I’d rather listen to music than the gear, which I think is, for some, a kind of obsessive distraction.

Anyway-- I’d bet anyone here that they would never be able to rank a series of cables by audio quality -- say five cables ranging from $200 - $10,000 each.

It’s all in your mind-- so if you want to believe that a $2000 piece of wire will beat a $200 piece of wire, then by all means, go for it! What was it again that P.T. Barnum said? Hope that doesn’t make me a commie!

So $200 is the absolute upper limit on price we should pay on cables?

No, not for me. I'm more in the $300-$500 per cable, but I've bought pure sterling silver Musicable for stupid money, tried some higher-end Wire-World and Audioquest stuff, and Cardis. Small differences-- not better or worse.

Currently I'm running Morrow and I'm pretty happy with their approach, materials and careful build quality. I like quality connections, pure materials, and price really varies by length-- I prefer the shorter the better. I prefer no ferrous metals in the cable circuit, connectors, or panel connectors in the gear panels- replacing that stuff to all copper/brass/gold-plate makes a difference. Overall, I get way better bang by improving my room acoustics, vibrations, reflections, etc.

tunefuldude

Thank you for your very thoughtful response to my comments regarding cables.

I have not tried Nordost yet-- but I will go over to their site and start doing some reading.

I don’t trust my first reactions to an equipment change unless the change is huge and obvious (something say, my wife would also notice), but I do believe that subtler differences will reveal themselves over time once I’ve had a chance to listen to a lot of different music. For me this is usually weeks or months.

I do believe that analog chains are sensitive to more variables than I am probably even aware of, and that the mix of gear and the quality of the power driving it make a huge difference in sound quality.

My main point is always the same. If you are not happy with the sound, first try improving the room acoustics as much as you can. Then, for vinyl in my case, look to the phono cartridge as that’s at the beginning of the chain, and there are real and obvious differences between cartridges. Then the phono preamp. Assuming you have good amps and preamps, look to the speakers and their positioning.

Ultimately, once you hit a certain level of quality, have enough power to drive your speakers, etc., after getting all of that out of the way, then sure, play with some cables.

My only point about cables is that price does not equal quality beyond a certain point-- what I have noticed are differences, like you might notice between some quality wines of the same varietal. They don’t just keep getting better and better as you spend more and more per bottle.

You clearly know your system, and you hear what you hear-- and in your case you like what you’re hearing from the Nordost cables. Many people have told me the same thing, so I might give them a try-- from turntable to phono preamp, from there to preamp, and from there to the amp. That’s a complete circuit and over time the changes will reveal themselves to me usually. I’m overall pretty happy with my system. The next major change I want to try is to buy a Primaluna tube amp and see how I like that sound. I’ve been on solid state for a very long time now, and I’m curious about how tube output will sound on my Genesis III’s.

Thanks again for taking the time to write what I consider to be a kind and useful reply, absent the usual insults, quips, and cultish dismissals.