$21,000. It could buy you a car, it could be a down payment on a house, you could take off on a couple of amazing vacations, have a really nice wedding, or it could pay for your sick mom’s liver surgery. Better yet, how about 3 meters of speaker cable?
The crazies wonderful people people at Audioquest are selling this new speaker cable called the Audioquest Everest. This audiophile speaker cable boasts “Counter Spiralling Geometry” and “Spread Spectrum Technology” conductors. It’s got 4 different sizes of positive conductors and eight (!) negative conductors.
They of course claim that it “provides considerably better transparency and dynamics” and that the “Pure Perfect-Surface eliminates harshness and greatly increases clarity”.
Now, I realize that I just posted about the $5000 ipod earphones , but hey at least those are a fashion statement. These audiophile cables aren’t diamond-encrusted! I always thought that the Pear cables were ridiculously expensive at $5000, but obviously they are tinny & distorted compared to these babies.
I remember once James Randi did a double blind test with Pear cables, comparing them against regular electrical cable (yes, the type that you plug into your coffee maker). James, are you listening? I need you here! Maybe you could tell a difference if you used this on your CD’s first.
If you’re ever wondering if expensive cables are snakeoil, then check this or this out.
Mom, forget that liver operation – i REALLY need my Counter Spiralling Geometry audiophile speaker cables when I listen to my favorite music.
I say maybe just save your money and use some coat hanger wire.
Just go the Acoustic Zen and get their WOW interconnects for $200 and a set of their hologram speaker cables for around $600, toss in 2 Acoustic Zen El Nino II power cords for around $400 and you’ll be in audio signal nirvana with the right set up… Yep, for somewhere in the ball park of $1,200, you’re ears and pocket book will be very happy…
Remember, there is a law of diminished returns, your ears can only detect frequencies in the 20 Hz to 20 kHz range, and if these signals are sent unhindered through the proper cables that isolate out EMI/RFI distortion, then you’ll be receiving all of your downstream components true capabilities…
An HDMI cord is not conducting sound, it is conducting a binary number stream made of ones and zeros. It doesn’t become sound until it reaches it’s destination at a DAC and is converted into analog sound. Therefore, there IS NO “SOUND QUALITY” being carried within an HDMI cord. This is scientific fact, and anyone who thinks he hears a difference between properly functioning HDMI cords is imagining that difference. No actual difference exists.
It’s been…an interesting read, if I do say so myself. After scrolling and reading over countless arguments, rebuts, claims, verbal attacks, simple opinions, and etc. (too many to list). I have to partially agree with those that don’t feel like a speaker cable of this price magnitude would make a justifiable purchase because (even w/o science) it just isn’t. A speaker cable is merely a piece of equipment whose purpose is to connect your speaker to the main source of the signal. It’s a smaller niche market catering to the an eclectic few that find enough personal reason to justify their purchase, and, firstly, as mentioned in general psychology, if a person finds that there is a discrepancy between his/her belief and his/her actual behaviour he/she will (most likely) form a new schema/belief to justify his/her discrepant behaviour rather then change the behaviour to match his/her original belief. Secondly, better sound is more likely to be the Placebo effect at work for most people because people have a natural tendency to place more confidence in things that are claimed to be better by experts (in this case marketing experts), and things that they have invested so much time, effort, and/or money in that it would seem inappropriate, in this context, to dislike something you put so much into. Lastly, Elitism is the last factor we have to consider due to the fact that most audiophiles don’t really dedicate themselves to music for music’s sake, but rather they dedicate themselves to music and most especially the equipment to show others that they are superior. Music happens to be much easier than say…short stories and poetry because, for the most part, you don’t NEED to focus on the text and its in-depth meanings to truly appreciate music even though music is, to the core, lyric poetry. The fact-of-the-matter is that music, nowadays, is an easy avenue to become or, at least, feel special because science cannot truly generalize human perception as perception is influenced by human experiences which allow our brain’s to form conclusions and preferences to certain types of stimuli, and these experiences differ from person-to-person that not even physics, in all its mathemathical infallibility, cannot GENERALIZE the human experience of sound, vision, smell to EVERYONE.
Using the three points above, I have to say that an expensive speaker cable in that ludacris price is a purchase that cannot be justified through any reasonable means, but us humans are by nature quite irrational creatures so most our impulse decisions might not be very pragmatic because of its secondary role in providing IMPROVED sound. I, for one, could easily justify buying an expensive speaker perhaps for its aesthetic value, and its primary role in producing sound, but at that price for a cable…I just don’t see it connecting ( I understand that $400 cables for uber intense audio equipment lovers, but all I can see here is minimal novelty, and self-pride).
I had a a/b comparison of rca style interconnects. I was having some trouble with my cd player so my sales person asked me to bring it over to look at. He has the same cd player as I do.
We connected it to his amp and the loading issue seemed to go away.
We had a few cds installed and as they were playing he thought the sound was not as good as his was. I had brought over a few cds so he loaded the same cd in his player and we did an AB comparison. At first we could not figure out why his player sounded better then mine since they were the same units. It turns out that i used my 14 dollar inter connects and he had a 400 dollar pair of interconnects.
We switched the cds and it was the same results. This test was as blind as it it could be since we did not start out comparing cables.
I never believed that cables make a difference intil this happened. I am not saying that there is value in 21 thousand dollar cables but I believe that if you spend reasonable amounts you will hear a difference.
John
Are the people above saying all cables sound the same? Like if I had a 20k CD/preamp/amp/speaker system no matter what interconnect I used the sound would be the same? What about speaker cables? I am to believe some out there say improving the speaker cable too makes not difference? That is rubbish.
I don’t have a really expensive system but I could *definitely* hear a difference between some cheap, stock speaker cable and some nice mid-range speaker cable. That is something I heard and not something I imagined. Now whether there is any point to 21k worth of interconnects is another point entirely. I think that at the low-end you can hear great improvements in sound quality by upgrading cables, when you get to prices like this I’m not sure I believe you’d hear a difference. But, there is most certainly a sound difference between really cheap cables and mid to higher end cables.
Dear All,
Expensive wires and interconnects are totally myth….
i have tested all branded wires and believe me there is no difference just do blind test and you will come to know.
All people claiming that they hear difference is basically not hearing any difference but their keep on telling them that there is difference…
don’t waste money on wires just get pure cooper wire to protect your system otherwise no difference in sound even if you use unbranded wire.
Regards,
Roberto