The Physics of Electricity

I actually did a careful experiment. I was a non-believer. and Sean, formerly on Audiogon, loaned me a set of cables to test.

I was using AWG12 zip cord. I forget exact;y what the test cables were, but they were a well regarded "exotic" brand.

I set up two identical Dynaudio speakers, close together,one with my zip cord and the other with the exotic cable. I connected the same (mono) signal to each channel. Now, by using the balance control on the preamp I could listen to one wire, and then the other in quick succession.

After quite a bit of listening I concluded that the exotic wire sounded very slightly better than the "junk" zip cord. I am not sure I would pay much for the difference. Nevertheless, when I reconfigured my power amps to monoblocks adjacent to the speakers I did spring for exotic wire. I have no idea if it was necessary, but the wire length was so short that the cost was not great.

"After quite a bit of listening I concluded that the exotic wire sounded very slightly better than the "junk" zip cord."

"we've secretly replaced the fine coffee they usually serve with Folgers Crystals"

Thank you very much. I will still go for fine coffee.

You are paying for some one that come up with an idea to make the cable sounds or conducts better. In instant, better material, insulation, thickness of the calbe, keeping electron flowing straight...and the list go on and on...

I did the same as Eldartford with Jps Superconductor vs. Monster 14AWG speaker wire from RadioShack and indeed Jps one sounded slightly better but for nearly 10x more money per same length of 6'. I finally found a bargain on bulk VanDenHul speaker wire that I've purchased after short jewish negotiation:-) with Chris for only $80 12' of remaining 'left-over' unterminated wire(silver plated milti-stranded Litz)that can 'sit with JPS at the same table', but for substantially less money. Same experiment was done with RadioShack Gold interconnects vs. Nordost(can't remember the model) loaned from the dealer where I couldn't decide which one is better at all testing it on the digital-to-preamp and preamp-to-amplifier.

I've spoken in my experiments of price magnitudes of couple hundreds per speaker or interconnect cable which is at this point not reasonable to me, but that madness goes to the magnitude of several thousands wich is complete nonsense. I've also spoken that it makes sense to have good quality cable in your system which is possibly better than zip-cord, that synergises with your system in terms of electrical characteristics so you can do your own hobby homework to figure out which one will do the best job rather than loaning a number of unreasonably priced cables in order to decide which one is the best by listening.

I'll also speak that we, consumers drive this market by purchasing wires on the insane level and that's what I'm trying to explain so that most of us can have a good quality cables without breaking each other's banks.

Minus the costs of R&D and advertising...most high end cables would be similarly priced as the "budget" ones.