Cable vs. Electronics: biggest bang for the buck

Asa, thanks for your beautiful and and immensely kind and touching response. We will have to move to private conversation to go further. Please give me time. I have so little. A fond wave across the oceans,

At last I have entered into the "wire" realm; a place of no interest to me. I feel... Not inspired.

So I look around myself, feeling like a babe in toy land. Teasing myself with such a glorious thought; allowing oneself such largesse as to spend 7 K on wires. I am so jealous. Really.

Of course, there are a lot of other things in audio alone I can spend 7 geeze to improve my audio enjoyment. Things I don't have, like a truly great turn table, the perfect cartridge... Wall to wall Persian carpet (room treatment).

I really shouldn't have walked into this candyland. You see, I'm on a married man with kids in college budget. How serendipity. It just dawned on me, my entire system is worth seven thousand. Now, how about that! What's more, is it is a music system that I bet would bring tears to nearly every one of you; yes, perhaps even you, Asa.

In the next few days, I will have visited one of our audiogon contributors, an audiophile. This man has wires for his system that would make Asa blush. He has gone so far as to rewire from breaker box to dedicated outlet with "8 awg teflon wrapped silver core wire." The "metal matter (Asa)" trail ends up with venerable 1980's Spendors. His front end is more costly and reportably superior to mine, and his amp may just be superior as well. I don't know what to expect.

Hmmm, 7 big ones, and probably more. I pray Nrchy and Asa aren't right.

Of course, in short time, the same gentleman will visit me for a listen to my WIRE POOR system. I hope we can both relate our observations. I'll be happy to, at least.

Muralman1, I see your point, but we're all on different budgets for different reasons; we all have different levels of audio experience; we have different levels of interest, and even that varies form topic to topic (i.e., analog vs. digital). Yet, I don't know of any A'gon member (and certainly not Asa, Deltof or Nrchy who started this thread) who outwardly boasts about his/her expenditures just to impress fellow members. (That would be sad, indeed.)

It helps, however, to communicate details about your own system(s) to establish your point of reference. Many members who have $5-10K systems (or even less, and like yourself, are happy with the results they've achieved) contribute meaningfully to this forum on a regular basis. Knowing that someone has experience with $50K and $100K systems (whether their own or through other listening experiences) helps me (the reader) to gauge that particular contributor's perspective. Whether I wish to emulate that person's spending pattern is an entirely different, and intensely personal, matter.

I'm not in the market for $7K wires either, but the topic of this thread is of interest to me in general terms, and although the depths of the philisophical exchange between Asa and Detlof is not of particular interest to me, it was easy enough for me -- and others -- to skip over without the necessity of hurling insults in their direction!

WMmcmanus, apologies to you and to all the others, for my selfishly misusing this thread to veer off on a tangent from it together with ASA. Glad, we didn't get any flak, which would have been quite understandable but also shows the generosity of our colleagues here.
For myself, I've learnt the importance of wires through the years and I try to use them as discernedly as I am able to, it makes me always uncomfortable however, if I feel tempted to use ic's as an instrument to better voice my system. I only try to do that as a last resort, when everything else fails. Basically wires should neither add nor subtract anything from a well set-up rig, but that is purist theory, I suppose. Cheers,

Muralman, I was wondering how long you could listen to my posts without saying something; always something about me but never at me (where's 6ch to tag team with you?). Three Asa mentions in one paragraph, the foil for your frustration. I guess when we ended our last conversation and I extended an olive branch by saying "Be well" that that didn't stick too long with you? Hmmm...

Again, I will repeat what I said the last time when you and another member started to get things personal (at the expense of cognitive rigor): If you want to have a "mature, reasoned" dialogue, contact me personally. You have my name and number and, again, there won't be an audience.

However, I know, Muralman, what you mean about $7K wires. I'm sure Natalie would point out that that is an extravagence and hardly justifiable given other wires' performance at lesser prices, a valid argument (then again, someone, say a person from Bangledesh, might then point out to you that your $7K is similarly obscene given another context...). But this doesn't seem to be your argument, because underlying it is a tone, one that seems to both lust after more expensive wire while, in value-laden, absolutist tones, decrying its existence at all. Laced through this is a cavalier cynacism just to make sure that we all know your are somehow above such waste - justified by your all-american nuclear family (which, if I remember from our last thread, was the reason that you gave that you couldn't contact me directly, "I have a family and don't have time to do that" et al, evidently a reason you use in several contexts when, er, handy..).

Wmc, in a deeply mature post, is right, on all of it, but I want to be more pointed. I think its crass to say to someone that because I have more expensive wires you can't talk or contribute; many people with great ears and systems use less expensive wire. With that said, however, there are also people who lack a sufficient point of referrence to make absolutist statements, and their continuation in doing so in more symptomatic of their envy, inauthentically directed, than the issues that they are allegedly engaging in (and a single listen to an audio bud's wire does not necessarily solve this, especially when one's psychologocal orientation in biased towards refutation, never a good thing for empiric objectivity...).

Again, Muralman, I am happy that you like your system. But you need to stop diving into threads seeking to provoke people to make yourself feel better about your decisions, family-based, value-based, or what have you. A dollop of self reflection might be in order.

With that said, I, like others here, will be interested in your reactions to your friend's wires and I look forward to that "reasoned, mature" contribution. In THAT context, and regardless of your analog-less existence, I will incorporate your observations with my own and others - which is really what this forum is all about.

Again, thank you all for indulging detlof and myself, and thank you audiogon for allowing it too. I will TRY not to do it too often (Ha, sure! says the grandstand!).