home made speaker cable vs. the big boys

In the current issue of Sterophile, Bob Ludwig (gateway mastering studios) states they only use Transparent Ref. Transparent also lists in some of their adds, recordings that have been made using their cables. I am sure they are not the only "high end cable" being used in all the recording studios.Just the ones that care.

You can bet your bottom dollar that there was a special deal cut between ANY cable manufacturer and recording studio, etc. if that recording studio's name or personnel names appears in an advertisement, press release, or marketing release. Quid Pro Quo. Want to bet that the studio either bought the cables at "cost," got them for nothing, or have them installed at no charge (on loan)? You bet that there is no special deal - you lose. It's called professional courtesy or trade discounting. It is done all the time. (Speaking of reference cables - Atma-Sphere, as I said before, makes their own "reference" cables from Belden pure copper microphone wire. A lot of DIY's swear by it). One last thing - most of the recordings of CD's today are better than a few years ago, but they could be much better still. Five more years and they'll be there - and you should be able to take advantage of their sonic superiority to today's recordings with your NEW audio system (CD transport/DAC). Cables won't make much difference in the final product (during recording) - software and post processing are where the "secret sauce" is at when making a recording sound the way it (finally) does. And post-processing is just software in the digital domain. The upsampling/oversampling schema of today is child's play compared to the algorithmic development of tomorrow. Cables don't even enter into the recording equation at that point, which is just a little less than they do today. Remember in recording CD's - it is bits and bytes in the digital domain. As long as the data gets from one point to another uncorrupted, that is all you need. Then you can post process it all you like. Why do you think there is so much lip-synching going on these days by "stars"?

I agree that the studios do not pay we do for cables, but chances are they have a choice between paying the same for all of the brands (next to nothing) but they still choose the "high end ones", and if bits and bytes are all the same then we should all just go out and buy a sony and be happy with it.And on the point of "secret sauce" being added, you can't polish a turd, if it was recorded with improper e.q. due to cables that color the sound you can do a lot to try and fix it but in the end the less you mess with an audio signal the better things turn out. If I see a so called "musician" lip sync on t.v. they just suck, if you can't play it live then you are not a musician, you are an actor.

Trelja....Actually, Gateway and Skywalker are mastering/recording studios that do indeed get caught up in cable "paranoia", and use $6000 interconnects....not that they actually have to pay full retail for them, of course!

I know a lot of people(musicians and recording personnel) who work at a few VERY high profile recording studios. Two of the more famous ones are RuffHouse Records(a truckload of Grammys in the past five years) and Riversound Studios(owned by Donald Fagan and Gary Katz - have recorded the BIGGEST names in the business). Both handle the lion's share of recording/mixing/producing of music made on the East Coast. Neither of them use anything more esoteric than Radio Shack quality stuff. You are quite correct about certain studios using exotic cable, but it is by far the exception, as opposed to the norm. I almost NEVER come across a person in this field who has heard of even AudioQuest(they all know Monster, some know Phoenix ala car stereo).