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chord Company cream cables..


woolz
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[quote name='stevie' post='750662' date='Feb 19 2010, 11:07 AM']Because it allows the cable company to "add value" and so increase its prices and profit margins. When they started out, Chord used to make no-nonsense, well priced cables. Now they sell speaker cables for £1,000 a pair, which gives you an idea of their business model. By the way, virtually none of these cable companies actually makes its own cable or plugs; they just assemble the bits and market them.

Any company can assemble a good quality 6m instrument cable and get it to market for around £25 - Neutrik jacks, a proven pro cable like Klotz, Belden, Canare - or even less using a good quality 'no brand' cable. From a performance point of view, there is no point spending much more than this - you're not going to make a better performing cable. If you do want to spend more, your extra money should go into very high build quality and QC, but chances are that what you'll get for your money is audio jewelry and - quite possibly - an inferior cable.

When marketing is more important than engineering you get things like Chord's cream outer jacket (I can't think of a worse colour for a cable that's going to spend most of its time on the floor) or the solid core of the Evidence cable, which not only makes the cable stiffer than it needs to be but also makes it much more susceptible to breakage.

Much of what is written about 'exotic' cables is written in good faith by people who really believe what they say and are convinced they have actually heard improvements from their expensive bits of wire. Unfortunately, they are often listening with their eyes.[/quote]


Massive +1 to all of that.

I wonder if anyone who champions these exotic cables could pick them out in a blindfold test?

I'm guessing not

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[quote name='velvetkevorkian' post='750719' date='Feb 19 2010, 11:51 AM']...or their wallets... :)[/quote]
Absolutely!

[url="http://www.pnas.org/content/105/3/1050.abstract"]http://www.pnas.org/content/105/3/1050.abstract[/url]

The authors of this scientific paper (N.B. not an article by a pimply-faced audio journalist) took 20 volunteers and gave them wine without telling them whether the wine they were tasting cost £5 or £100 or something in between. When they were told they were drinking the £100 wine, the fMRI recorded higher levels of activity in the part of the brain associated with pleasure. It didn't make any difference what wine they drank. If they thought they were drinking an expensive wine, the brain automatically registered greater pleasure.

I have seen previous scientific research which demonstrated that the power of aspirin to relieve pain increases according to the lavishness of the aspirin pack. That was based on subjective statements, and whilst it was properly conducted and therefore authoritative, this research was based on actual brain scans.

The application of this paper to cables, pickups, strings, exotic woods, limited signed editions, and so on, is obvious. The human brain will gain more pleasure from expensive products even when the only difference between them and other products is that they cost a lot more.

Edited by stevie
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There's a lot of interesting psychology going into pricing and marketing bull, people like to feel their own worth and like to be assured firstly that they can afford the high price, secondly that they are getting a better product, it reflects their own aspirations of self-value, like the Stella Artois 'Reassuringly Expensive' tag from a few years ago. Nip over to Belgium or Holland and a lot of the nationals won't drink the Stella as its seen as the economy brand. Anyway, meanered o/t there, quite fancy a beer now.

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[quote name='escholl' post='751994' date='Feb 20 2010, 05:57 PM']I personally use teflon tubes filled with liquid mercury as my cables, anything less and you are just strangling the tone out of your bass...[/quote]Peasent, everybody knows unicorns umbilical cords filled with direction specific fairy dust with plugs hewn from solid platinum are the only way to achive tonal Nirvana.

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If a more expensive cable gives you more confidence in your sound, then it is well worth whatever you paid for it. It doesn't matter if the only sound difference is in your head, if it makes a difference to you then it has worked. It is like placebos, they aren't fake drugs, they fulfill a genuine role in medicine.

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