Are audiophiles still out of their minds?


I've been in this hobby for 30 years and owned many gears throughout the years, but never that many cables.  I know cables can make a difference in sound quality of your system, but never dramatic like changing speakers, amplifiers, or even more importantly room treatment. Yes, I've evaluated many vaunted cables at dealers and at home over the years, but never heard dramatic effect that I would plunk $5000 for a cable. The most I've ever spent was $2700 for pair of speaker cables, and I kinda regret it to this day.  So when I see cable manufacturers charging 5 figures for their latest and "greatest" speaker cables, PC, and ICs, I have to ask myself who buys this stuff. Why would you buy a $10k+ cable, when there are so many great speakers, amplifiers, DACs for that kind of money, or room treatment that would have greater effect on your systems sound?  May be I'm getting ornery with age, like the water boy says in Adam Sandler's movie.
dracule1
Act-too-ally both 5 and 3 are real numbers in Czarivey’s example. The expression 3i is, however, an imaginary number. Thus the square of the imaginary number 3i is -9.

Wow!  Let the record show that on 6-15-2016 at 5:26 pm EDT Geoff submitted a post that I actually agree with 100%  :-)

As for the meaning of Czarivey's post to which he was responding, I'm not sure but my guess would be he was implying that a reason sonic quality should not be characterized in percentage terms is that a component of such assessments tends to be imaginary in many cases :-)

JL35, thanks very much for your comments earlier in the thread about my post that was quoted by Wattsperchannel.

Regards,
-- Al
 
 
almarg
6,455 posts
06-15-2016 6:10pm
Wow! Let the record show that on 6-15-2016 at 5:26 pm EDT Geoff submitted a post that I actually agree with 100% :-)

Stick with me, Al. I'll take you to the top.

geoffkait3,587 posts06-15-2016 12:00pmTo my knowledge no audiophile ever thought his sound was unacceptable. Even when it sounds like cats being tortured.
or acceptable for that matter.

geoffkait3,587 posts06-15-2016 4:26pm Thus the square of the imaginary number 3i is -9. 
True but still hard to imagine.
So to answer the original question - audiophiles are not quite out of their minds but sometimes their neuronal "cabling" needs recalibration. More difficult in some cases than the others.