Have you ever been into an audio hi-fi shop and been utterly bewildered by the claims they make about gold plated speaker cables and the like? When buying a new amp a while ago, it happened to come with £40 worth of free cable. The assistant recommended their highest-grade audio cable at the staggering price of… yes, £40 per meter! So I could get one measly meter of cable free? I’m not sure who was more insulted, whether it was me by his offer, or him by my insistence on 20 meters of £2 per meter cable instead.
So, it’s time to find out just how many of these claims you should pay attention to, and which are just hype and nonsense they can charge a fortune for.
Bring on the Audioholics with a comprehensive guide to consumer audio myth-busting for cables, amplifiers and speakers. My personal favourite is on cable “break-in” which is an obvious ploy to get consumers to keep cables beyond their return date, and to buy expensive “break-in” source material to be played through your brand new cables.
In short, if it sounds ridiculous and stupid, then it probably is.
[image via terman]
