On Mar 15, 6:56*am, "James Sweet" wrote:
Understand that, Mr. Sweet.

Had a friend who was a McIntosh dealer in Boston. *Bought a bunch of
equipment from him over the years. *When he started carrying the esoteric
cables, I asked him if he thought they would really benefit a system. *His
answer? *"Well, they make a lot of money for me!"

Jim

There was an article I saw linked on engadget.com the other day. Someone did
a double blind test with monster cables vs. wire coat hangers with
connectors soldered to the ends. The audiophools they had listening couldn't
tell the difference. What a joke.

PMFJI, but I'd like to offer an alternative opinion on Monster cables.

One of my jobs through college was in the repair shop of the largest
hi-fi dealer in my city. They sold only mid- to high-end gear there;
consequently people for the sales force were generally chosen based on
their ability to relate (and cater) to the upper-middle and upper
class type of customer.

I'm talking about salespeople who could talk an entire morning about
how a pair of speakers sounded, never using terminology that
approached anything that could be measured by a technician. These
folks could supposedly discern the difference in sound quality of a
*tonearm* (not the cartridge, not the turntable, not the connecting
cables, but just the tonearm, for heavens sake.)

Needless to say, being strictly technical types, we in the service
department built up a fairly solid level of skepticism after being
exposed to all these audiophiles for months and months. We had a
tendency to think that all the audiophile/salemen were hearing sound
qualities that, since we couldn't measure them, weren't really there.

One day the store started carrying Monster speaker cables. So I read
all the sales materials about skin effect, etc. and immediately
thought it was all marketing hype. I mean, a near-zero ohm length of
wire is just that, right? What could be different?

Monster supplied the store with a comparison display which contained a
single 4PDT switch so you could switch back and forth between whatever
speaker wires you preferred and the Monster cables while running a
pair of speakers through a receiver.

The salemen set this up with a high-end receiver and a pair of one of
their top speaker lines (I believe they were Dahlquists.) The
alternative speaker wire was new, 18-gauge zip cord cut to exactly the
same length as the Monster cables.

With no special equalization in play and at moderate volume, the
difference between the ordinary speaker cord and the Monster cables
was marked, even to my untrained, non-audiophile ears. I was
shocked...I even returned to relisten periodically just to make sure I
wasn't hearing things myself. I even took the display switch apart to
make sure they weren't cheating.