As far as I know, one can get a 50% discount on the recommended retail price and still leave the dealer with an "acceptable" margin. This is certainly not the case with hifi components. I don;t really understand why this is so, as I would have thought cables would be the hardest sell. Or perhaps, by giving the huge discount, the customer thinks he's getting a good deal?

That may be true of some products but not the ones I have. Certainly not VDH. 50% is top discount barring specials which usually involve things that are being introduced or discontinued. It wasn't true of AudioQuest years ago when I was a dealer, it may be now. Siltech also never gave that low a price. There are products that do; in the old days I sold Supex, the 901 retailed for $175, my 4 price was $87.50. I also had a price sheet from Pickering, they had a cartridge with a "list price" of $150 that I could get for $18.75. I recently tried to get a cartridge from a company that I have purchased from previously for the "accommodation" price, which is 50% off. I intended to use it as a demonstrator but they declined to sell it to me at that price, instead offering me one at the standard rate, which is usually close to 40%. The idea that there are huge mark ups on most of the quality products doesn't apply to most of the lines I represent or could get.



Stan Wallen, Alternative Audio

I don't know whether this applies specifically to the names you mention above, but most of these so-called audiophile cables are not actually manufactured by the name on the box, they are manufactured to order by much larger companies which are not household names but well known in industry. And the so-called audiophile manufacturer makes a very handsome markup on what they pay the real manufacturer. For instance, I have used Gore as a cable supplier for extreme bandwidth and temperature applications ( http://www.gore.com/en_gb/products/cables/index.html ) - yes they are the same Gore as Gore-tex - and their rep has told me explicitly that they manufacture some of the so-called super-fi cables for some well known names, at a fraction of the cost compared with what the are then sold for. I suspect you will find Gore involved in many cables featuring PTFE. But you never see it marketed as Gore, probably because they only want their names associated with real and provable characteristics of the cable. Their rep has also told me that they made up some cables with deliberately complicated structure and exotic ingredients, but still within their standard manufacturing capabilities, and just hawked it around the audiophile cable names until one of them bit and took it on as product line. No attempt was made to optimise or even assess its suitability for audio at Gore.

I'm sure other big manufacturers do the same.

We have talked before about cables not being manufactured by the name on the box. We have also talked about hi-fi being a smaller industry, we are lead by computing demands etc. so this shouldnt be a surprise.

If people find cables by the big cable manufacturers that sound good then tell us. I like the Alpha PTFE silver plated copper I can get from RS. It comes in single stranded cores, so two for a mono run. Take your pick on colour schemes and how you roll them- spaced pair, with a light twist or sheathed in the nylon mesh stuff also available from RS. This almost brings us back to RS 56 strand. Do they supply other brands? Well we dont shop by label so it shouldnt matter, should it?!?! Lets not guess and just enjoy the cables for what they are.

Not all manufacturers recommend expensive cable. Look at Naim, NAC-A5 is £15 a meter. I assume their CD players etc still come with interconnect. Obviously the ARO does!

Why do some people consider Rolex a prestigious brand just because they are expensive? Everyone knows Rolexes are for the nouveaux-riches. Aston Martin are a little better, but they tend to install the steering wheel on the wrong side, which is yet another utter mystery.

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Sumer is icumen in!

Oh dear - should I be upset with myself as I look at my trusty Rolex Oyster Perpetual? Admittedly in stainless not gold. But I must admit it doesn't tell the time any more accurately than my office radio-controlled clock at £20.

I don`t think they are that expensive, I am glad they are built the way they are as they they enable me to count lap times in the Rally Aston without falling to bits from vibration

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Alex H

That's ok, I just wanted to write something irreverent for my thousandth post which, I now see, turned me into a "God" Thank goodness I'm not called Vespasian

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Sumer is icumen in!

Wow, I am not even yet a Demi God!

I blame Jean Hiraga.

The problem with cables is that their effectiveness depends so much on the partnering equipment that it is difficult to make generalisations. When changing hardware is it not often the case that a while later you start the slog of trying more cables in an attempt to optimise performance?

Look forward to that with interest

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"Quicquid Nitet Notandum"