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In Reply to: RE: Discussing cables - could this energy be better spent? posted by Donald North on September 30, 2009 at 21:43:49
. . . make up such a tiny percentage of the music buying public, as to constitute barely a blip on the radar of the major labels.
Small independent labels are likely to be more responsive, but many of them -- especially the "audiophile" labels -- are already far more conscientious than the majors about the sonics of their releases.
Cable fetishists tend to be people who already have very good systems, and are trying to extract the last iota of performance (imaginary or not) from their gear. They are probably, in many cases, the same people who listen mostly to "audiophile" recordings, and hence are not that concerned with the ubiquitous badness of major label commercial recordings. So their obsession with minutiae will continue unabated.
Please note that I am NOT dismissing out of hand the possible sonic effects of cables. ALL cables exhibit series resistance, parallel capacitance, and series self-inductance, along with other electrical properties (skin effect, etc.) which really only operate in the megahertz range, or over runs of many miles. Some "exotic" speaker wires are so inductive as to audibly roll off the higher frequencies when connected to an actual speaker load. Some in the past (Monster, IIRC) have been so capacitive as to distress weaker amplifiers, particularly when connected to highly capacitive electrostatic speakers. Inadequately shielded interconnects (and possibly power cords) can function as antennas, picking up airborne RFI and EMI garbage and contaminating the audio signal. These effects are real, and measurable. A "purist" would regard such cables as inherently defective, but some "cultists" like to use them as expensive tone controls. I don't see this phenomenon abating any time soon.
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