Cables more hype than value?

The ones who get it right, IMO, are those who buy what they can actually hear and don't buy what they can't.

Yes - total hype. There is nothing better than 10-gauge Belden. Anyone who buys expensive cable is just being taken in by the hype and nobody out there can actually hear anything I can't hear. People who make expensive cables are thieves and people who buy them are just fools with money who are trying to show off. I've done A/B comparisons using a mint copy of "Lord Sutch and His Heavy Friends" played through Paradigm Studio 20 bookshelf speakers and I heard no difference between the Belden and Stealth Dream (10K) speaker cables.

Rok2id wrote:
02-17-13: Rok2id
Zd542,
I think you have me confused with someone else as pertains to wire. On this thread, I am just a messenger. All I posted, about cable, was from people a lot more knowledgeable than me. I just delivered the message. I didn't drink the Wire kool-aid, so I am not involved. Just trying to be helpful. HOWEVER, when some one says a cable is 'danceable', I have to speak. After all I am only human. There is only so much a human can take.
I am not a player is the wire debate. Blue Jeans is all need.
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Rok2id later wrote:
And btw, if you spent $70,000(US) on mostly cables, you are a very respectful idiot!
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It seems you have changed your position during the course of this thread to one of someone who was not involved to one of disrespect and name calling.

If you are happy with your dorm-room hifi, fine. I cannot imagine why one who claims to totally eschew the "hype" of high-end products, spends so much time talking about it. Everyone is entitled to their views and I think that uncivilized behavior should be avoided. Not censored, just avoided.

Bring back some Dots for me, if you don't mind.

I think Aczel says that there are no differences in wires that cannot be explained in terms of resistance, capacitance and inductance. His back issues contain an article showing how cables with different electrical characteristics caused very large and measurable differences in the frequency response based on the cable's interaction with the amp/speaker circuit. I know he once wrote that coat hangers are identical to the most expensive cables, but that statement seems inconsistent with his own article.

On amplifiers, he does say that amplifiers of a similar design, matched in levels and run below clipping are indistinguishable from each other in listening tests. He never said that all amps - tube and solid state, set and push-pull, all sound the same.

A man goes to the doctor - the doctor says "I have terrible news. You have cancer, you have alzheimers" and the man says "well, thank God I don't have cancer". One of my favorite Gilbert Gottfried jokes.

Let me add something to the mix. I spent half my life as a professional musician and I was fortunate to get into the NY recording scene very early and I was doing demos in the 80s up at RCA studios and other famous ones as well. I thought I was pretty much a hotshot and I made my first recording. When I listened to the playback, I was astounded. The playback did not sound at all as good as what I THOUGHT I played - it was much worse. I then realized that I wasn't hearing was I was playing, but hearing what I thought I was playing. Somehow, my brain got into the middle of the ear/music making parts and twisted things around. It took me a long time of playing and listening to playbacks to sync them up to a point where I could hear what I played in real time and it would sound on tape just as I heard it in the studio - but that took time. Time to get that funhouse out of your brain that makes you think you're great when you're not. The brain that makes a skinny woman see herself in the mirror and think she's fat. I can guarantee you the drugs and alcohol were the 3-in-1 oil that kept the ears wired directly to the performance without the freakin brain stickin' it's nose in and convincing you that you're hearing what you played.

Maybe this will make some sense to some - once the human mind gets in the middle of things, a lot of strange roads are taken. I think that through years of training, I can actually hear what I'm hearing, uneffected by whatever funhouse mirror the brain adds into the process.

I don't think everyone will undertstand this, but I know some of you will. I do respect all of your view though. Rok - I do own a pair of 10 gauge Beldens with welded connectors and they're fine. I could problably live with them and enjoy my music just as much. I don't own any crazy wires, but I do think my ViVa speaker cables make the speakers sound far more open and clear, as if the window to the band is open wider. But when I get bored, I'll go back to the beldens for a few months and enjoy them and then swithch back to the ViVas and did the more open, less hi-fi presentation.

Gentlemen and Ladies - please don't let our disagreements divide us. We are predominantly a dying breed, so let's enjoy the waning years. Any of you are invited by to listen to some beatuful music and have a steak. Really.