Chinese fake cables How fake, how good?

I’ll take Chinese ’fake’ OFC copper (99.95% copper or the higher purity 99.99% copper) cables anytime of the day over extortionately priced strange hybrids be they interconnects or speaker wires. I have absolutely no need to be deceived by ’genuine’ manufacturers anymore.

Seriously.

If someone wants to decry fake cables then let them present some evidence that their own are superior in performance. It shouldn’t be hard should it? Resistance induction and capacitance are all easily measured yet strangely NEVER EVER mentioned by manufacturers and dealers. Ask yourself, why not?

This is nothing like the fake headphone scams where the similarities are largely only cosmetic. Or cheaply made computer parts such as Power Supplies, RAM or SSDs. Sometimes too many corners get cut.

On the other hand some Chinese goods can actually be of high quality. I’ve had several ’unknown branded’ phones from China and they rivalled from my iPhone 6s Plus in performance apart from inferior camera quality and lack of updates (which I didn’t need as I don’t keep them for more than 2/3 years anyway). One budget model even bettered the iPhone in battery life and screen quality as it had an OLED screen which Apple didn’t adopt til much later.

And all of this at less than 1/4 of the price. Great value for the consumer I’d say.

Back to the main point I’d say if manufacturers argue that Chinese cables are a scam, then let them present some or even ANY evidence that their products aren’t a FAR FAR bigger scam.

Overpriced cables remain the oldest and greatest scam in the already dubious world of domestic audio retail.

https://copperalliance.org.uk/about-copper/conductivity-materials/oxygen-free-high-conductivity-copp...

They are a POS rip-off and must-to-avoid

ignoring their obvious illegal and unethical practices, there are a buzzilion threads out there highlighting the crap construction
here’s just a sampler highlighting all the the junk build rip-offs and why they comparatively perform like crap.

http://www.element-acoustics.ca/audio_visits.php?aid=41https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/chinese-odin-cables.15229/
https://www.vandenhul.com/product/the-mainsstream-hybrid-halogen-free/
https://www.avforums.com/threads/ebay-warning-chinese-fake-cables.1218411/
https://www.stereophile.com/news/091106vdh/index.html

https://mniec.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/fake-van-den-hul-d102-mkiii/

Commies do not respect intellectual property rights or international laws of commerce. 

When I started this thread I mentioned that I had the chance to compare fake Cardas Clear Light interconnects with the real thing and could hear no difference. I have since tried the fake Nordost Odins and find them to be better than the fake Cardas cables. I have no idea whether they sound anywhere close to the real Nordost Odins as I don't know anyone who has the money or is silly enough to spend A$30,000 for a pair of interconnects. I even doubt if Australian Hi Fi stores have these cables in stock given the impact on their inventory costs. What I do know is that to me the cables sound excellent and I would be very surprised if the excellent Holo connectors are not genuine.

Leaving the ethical issues around fakes aside as a separate issue to the quality and sound of the fake Chinese cables as everyone has a right their opinion on ethical matters. However it appears from many of the responses on this thread that many, no lets say most, contributors feel they have a right to express an opinion on the sound of these fakes based on pure bias and ignorance without having heard, seen or bought any of these fake cables. akg_ca above cites a number of links to support his/her negative views but I suspect no first hand experience. Even these links are in some cases based on no first hand experience or worse are from the Audio industry itself which has a clear vested interest in maintaining the inflated cost of genuine audio cables and therefore being very negative about the copies.

The only opinions which IMO matter are from those who have heard the fake cables in their systems. I note that most of the contributors in this category, like myself, are positive about the value for money of these fake cables and even one contributor who has bought and dissected the cables seems impressed with the quality of the fake Odins.

I don't know if there will be many more contributions to this thread but it would be nice if they were based on actual experience rather than bias, heresay and ignorance.

Making a fake Teo Audio cable would be pretty darned tricky.....

The closest we've come to that, is someone who took one apart and re-terminated it and called it as simply 'used'. It was immediately visible as being re-terminated. 

The list of things one has to do to make a real one is easily over 15 items long and each is custom lore, that is easily visible as all wrong, in a fake. One can't even source some of the materials for said attempt, at all.