re: Study shows $4,000 boutique audio cable works same as $7 Amazon Basics cable

Posted on 4/11/26 at 9:20 am to Taxing Authority

Posted by Obtuse1

Westside Bodymore Yo

Member since Sep 2016

30247 posts

Posted on 4/11/26 at 9:20 am to Taxing Authority

quote:
Using unbalanced lines and worrying about cable quality is

In home 2 channel audio balanced cables shouldn't be an issue. The runs shouldn't be long enough, ground loops should be dealt with in a different manner, and you can usually avoid EMI bleed from other cables.

I have generally be an objectivist throughout my 45+ year audio journey. Cabling is generally one of the last tweaks left. People get to their reasonable end game gear, and cables give them a place to spend some (relatively) small money and feel like they are getting more of their system's potential, plus it is audio jewelry.

For me, the place to spend money on an audio system is where you have transducers. That being the phono cartridge and speaker. Here is where you are taking physical movement and converting it to an electrical signal or vice versa. Even in today's world and even with 7-figure systems these are the places where output varies significantly from input.

An even bigger fascination than cables is people who have $100k plus in gear in their listening room and don't have a single room treatment. Not even any absorption at the first reflections, except maybe the floor. They could get a decent front end and a set of powered Neumann or Genelec speakers and spend $2k-10k on room treatments (depending on how much DIY they can or are willing to do) and flat out destroy a 6-figure setup. Speakers are just half of the whole, the speaker/room interface is the whole.