Cable vs. Electronics: biggest bang for the buck


I recently chronicled in a review here, my experience with a very expensive interconnect. The cables cost nearly $7000 and are well beyond my reach. The issue is, the Pursit Dominus sound fantastic. Nothing in my stereo has ever sounded so good. I have been wondering during and since the review how much I would have to spend to get the same level of improvement. I'm sure I could double the value of my amp or switch to monoblocks of my own amps and not obtain this level of improvement.
So, in your opinion what is the better value, assuming the relative value of your componants being about equal? Is it cheaper to buy, great cables or great electronics? Then, which would provide the biggest improvement?
128x128nrchy
Where is Muralman?!! I must be loosing my touch...

Unsound, yes, incidious, it must be stopped, stone the witch(es). Yea, BTW, isn't that a cable hanging loosley around your neck, you know, lookin' kinda like a noose? :)

Gregm: interesting point, thank you. I knew it was too much to mix the material relationship of Jungian (or is it Neo-Jungian?) archetypes together with the idea of bliss/not-bliss, and their sequence, if any. Ok, let me think... Each "coexist" you say, like in an integral, dynamic relationship where ones existence necessarily implies the other? I think that occurs as the dynamic in oscillation between the two (as prey recoil from the fear of loss, and as predator grasping towards the potentiality of bliss, or absense of loss). So, at the deepest level of consciousness, is a binary oscillation bewteen seeking bliss and avoiding its absense. But isn't that always about bliss? Isn't a predator created (in human consciousness) by the fear of becoming prey in the first instance? So, which is first, or are they both merely reflections of each other, each manifesting different to the eye based on their relationship to fear? Tao Te Ching says that this is the spinning wheel (hope and fear are still rungs on a ladder;the amoeba's binary instinctual program of light/dark, prey/predator, eat/be eaten, etc.) and that you can, by seeing this oscillation within yourself and, thus, seeing below it, step off the wheel, or step beyond it, realizing that it was powered by your own beleif in it. So, if that is true, then the oscillation spins as you describe, but its existence does not exclude the possibility of transcending it. What is your true face? Hope I understood you and not too confusing here.

Psychanimal: yes, it can become a spinning wheel if you get focused on the things of audio too much, switching too much. But what I found interesting is that you think your wires now have a greater performance envelope than the electronics. A materialist who thinks only amps are components might say, how can you tell that; if the components aren't translating? How can you tell its the wire? Of course, under the same reasoning, then how could we ever tell if one piece of electronics is superior to another? BTW, I like Tice wire, good value, good harmonics, should respond well to the cryo in its weak spots.

Detlof: what is Jung's true face, even if he doesn't see it? Love and fear at once; how Old Testament of him. It looks as if Carl J. couldn't escape his demons, so he just said they must "co-exist". First Rule: don't limit the Tao/God/Jehovah with two faces - that's a binary thing. When you listen to beautiful music what face do you have, predator-face or prey-face, or no-face? What is your true face-not-a-face? But you know this, don't you (the answer you have, before you started to answer to yourself)?

Detlof: yes, consciousness states are corrolated with material parts of the brain, although they are not bound by it. I was just wondering, since I pretty much stopped reading all the technical stuff a few years ago, if there was anything new. Not really important, though, just curious. You have better things to do than listen to me yap, I know. But thanks anyway. "Greater truth"? Why do psychologists always want to be scientists, or have a knee-jerk reaction to wanting to seem "scientific"? I think before one practices psychology one should know what it is. If you want to conduct experiments on things, go be a scientist (unless, of course, you can get to categorizing a rat as a thing...). Since the practice of psychology - therapy - is only as good as the therapist, it always has struck me as disconcerting that the one "treating" is more interested in the efficacy of his/her method than seeing through his/her own ego to see the fallacy of that attachment. Hmmm. Detlof, I am confident your are a very good therapist (read: healer).
Asa, I am with you as regards psychology and those "treating" in the name of it, not so in the case of Jung. It is not a question of coexistence, that is far too comfortable, it is a paradoxon, which has to be born and lived through until it becomes unimportant. Come one, you know that......
Yes, paradox. Did he see it, merely touch it and tell others, or live within it, comfortably, stably? At the end of the power of the thinking mind is paradox of mind; as paradox is lived within, reality reveals, in the case of Jung most famously, infinite succesive temporalities (temporality being a foundation of hypothetico-deductive cognition; cognition operates upon reality through a comparative temporal construction). Linearity releases its grip and temporality becomes flux, revealing deeper symmetries of change. Jung's "synchronicity" (read paradox: coincidence not coincidence) is a perception that is temporally-based as much as "normal" thinking. In other words, temporal perception has not faded into paradox - it only looks that way to the temporal-linear mind - but has evolved: it sees "synchronous-ly" and the same way it always did at the same time. One level transcends the last, meaning that it moves beyond AND at once includes. I was wondering whether Jung co-existed in this way or merely had peak experiences of that level of perception that he then told people about, erecting an analytic structure to (partially?) describe it and (his innovative extention) apply it therapeutically. Was his perception trans-temporal, so to speak, moment to moment, or now and then with reportage thereafter?

On bliss/not-bliss paradox and transcending of its oscillation (not just seeing it from afar and reporting it to others), given your description of Jung's recoil and ego distortion vis-a-vis others, I would find it - and I say this with utmost respect - highly doubtful that he had transcended that oscillation in a stable sense (that matrix being much, much deeper than even the archetypes, much less transitory destabilzation of linearity producing "paradox"....detlof, see my personal message on that already sent).

What does this have to do with audio? (jeez, tee'd up on a teeball stand and everything).

I can hear the knives sharpening, the bushes rustling...Oh come on guys, its wide open, take a shot!! Muralman, Subaru et al what am I possibly going to do without you, my foils? (Script reads: high pitched moan, flying monkeys looking on [how about that for an image, detlof!]): I'm melting...I'm melting...oh, my world...

You only have to click your heels three times. You always could go home (ignore the thinking machinating man behind the curtain...). Stop thinking about equipment, that mine is a "component" and yours is not, that experience is secondary to my experiment upon it, etc. and click your heels... chop wood, carry water.

6ch what do you think?
Asa, I'm disappointed. I thought if any one could see whats around my neck, it would be you. Hint, it's the thread.
I know, Unsound. I was just joshin' ya. But its still there, you're still here! Run for your lives, its the thread that ate Detroit!! My condolences...

Hey, SO, cable IS a component, even with Muralman's Apogees, even though he's not sure, and yes, scientific measurements are important, but to believe they are primary to the experiement of listening is itself heresy to the Cartesian God, and saying that Dominus is mis-spent money when you yourself spend $7K on a system and there are still (the last time I checked) Bangledeshis is somewhat hipocritical and revealingly self-serving, and, hopefully, enough scientific-attached guys with puny ________ have seen this and will think twice about beating people over the heads with their rulers (is there an archetype for that, detlof?) - until, of course, they get re-juiced by WWF (or is it WWE now?) and their, er, other needs (the puny part) - so, you know, it was a good thing, no?

Oui.