This may come across like "marketing fluff," but I'm just a satisfied customer who has been "along for the ride" on the QSA LANEDRI products since its inception. I have no affiliation with QSA LANEDRI apart from friendship and appreciation for what Anas' products have done for my system over the years.
It's worth noting that the "classic" line of QSA products (fuses, power jitters, etc.) differs significantly from the newer QSA LANEDRI line. The LANEDRI products are based on the classic QSA treatment technology, but Anas Lanedri continues to push the envelope on what can be treated and how effective the treatments are.
His latest line, the Discovery Veridion series, is shockingly affordable relative to the impact it has. If he charged 10x as much (which is roughly commensurate with their performance relative to other marketplace offerings), folks who believe that cables matter and that everything makes a difference would likely view them as serious competition to the established actors and would judge them on their merits.
The price is a reflection of Anas' focus: the discovery he and his team have made while evolving the underlying QSA treatment technology. To keep the focus on the impact of the discovery, they selected off-the-shelf products (like Monoprice cables) that are notoriously inexpensive and historically eschewed by audiophiles as delivering inferior results due to inferior engineering and inferior materials.
Anas' team then applies this latest generation of the QSA tech, the so-called "Veridion" treatment, to these inexpensive cables (and other connectors, and even devices) and causes such a profound transformation in them that upon listening they impart qualities to the sound (or the picture) as if they were made of boutique materials like OCC, OF copper, ultra-high purity silver, graphene, precious metal and specially formulated alloys, etc. -- and even beyond that -- as evidenced by the fact that so many who have tried them are trading in their ultra-expensive cords and interconnects for more, inexpensive Discovery Veridion products (myself included).
This is, of course, "heretical nonsense" when judged purely on a materials basis since the process is a trade secret and its impact on a material level may be untestable with current tools.
This brings me to the elephant in the room that all of us, like proverbial blind men, can feel: that Audiophilia has long been the domain of two camps, the objectivists and the subjectivists, and both of them are doggedly convinced that their view is right and the other view is wrong. "This is a tree!" cries one, his hand on the elephant's leg. "This is serpent!" cries the other, his hand on the elephant's trunk. Both are wrong to a sighted observer, but both are doggedly convinced they are right.
Let's consider how these two camps might approach evaluating an everyday object that is the result of many hours of research and craftsmanship, often designed to elicit an emotional response: a book.
Objectivists revel in hard science. They judge books not by covers or even authors -- instead focusing on the physics and chemistry of the book itself: what paper was used (is it low-acid, archival quality)? What binding technique was employed? Is the cover hard or soft? is it bound in leather or paper or cloth? How robust is the spine? Does it creak or crack when it opens? What is the Mean Time To Failure on the binding? How many words does the book have? How many chapters? Are there typographical or offset printing errors? These are the hallmarks of a quality made book, grounded in testable science, and nothing else matters to them nor should it matter to you. Semiotics is not a matter of physics or chemistry, so the "words" are eschewed. They have no bearing on the objective facts.
Subjectivists focus on the intangibles: Who is the author? What else have they written? Where was this edition printed? Who designed the layout and the lettering? Is the cover beautiful? Does the book feel good in my hands? Does it speak of quality and pride in craftsmanship? Does it look good on the shelf? Are the font and the typesetting comfortable? Is the presentation beautiful to my eyes? Does it read well? Are the words on the page the result of an author who is talented in their craft? And perhaps most importantly: What emotions do these words evoke in other readers? What feelings do these words evoke in me? That, above all else, is what matters to a subjectivist, and little else matters to them.
In short, we can judge a book by its materials, or we can judge a book by its meaning. (Some can even judge it by both; these may be the only folks in the room who can see the Elephant. Some days, like today, I like to feel I'm one of them, but often I'm leaning towards objectivism (as an engineer by trade) or subjectivism (as someone who likes to enjoy things on their merit, not their materials)).
I choose to believe that what Anas and his team have Discovered has great semiotic meaning: that we may have found, scratching at a quantum level, a way to get mundane materials to behave more like superlative ones. How does it work? Who knows. Does it work? Subjectively, absolutely. My ears are convinced.
The fact that people can and will choose to laugh at me (and others) for spending $250 (aka the price of a fancy date night with my wife) on a product that continually gives me pleasure and elevates our family's home entertainment day in and day out... rather than spending the price of a full family vacation for four ($2500+) on a product that is made of "objectively better materials" and powered by "measurable science"* but delivers an inferior result... well, that's priceless.
(It's not lost on me for a minute that there is a segment of the hardest of the hard-core objectivists who will say the $5 Monoprice cable measures in every way that matters the same (or better) than the $250 treated cable or the $2500 boutique cable, that it's all 'snake oil' sold by charlatans and 'they' are just looking out for me. I appreciate their concerns, but I frankly don't share them. I've heard and seen otherwise, and I can choose to waste my money as a wish, just as they can choose to save their money and be content. Win-win).
