Cable Wars - ASR Review of Kimber KS 1036 Silver RCA Cable ($4500 pair)

@decooney It is true some (I'd even say many nowadays) cannot hear any differences. 

In fact, I was one of those people. Been there, done that sorta thing. During my teenage years and early 20s, I couldn't tell the difference between gear. Most speakers even sounded the same to me. There were many times when I thought my cheap Infinity 362 speakers sounded better than the 4x more expensive Polk Lsi15. 

But even during that period, I knew music sounded more bad than good, and there were a lot of room for improvements. The 3 things that helped me improved and learned what's good and what's bad are these:

1) Headphones, a really good headphones can teach a listener a lot.

2) Good amplification, especially tubes, presents that naturalness of music.

3) Speaker placement - trials and errors. A little shift here and there alters the soundstage, tonality, many other aspects of sound, and we understand and become more perceptive about these changes and understand this and that are changing.

I remember back in 2015 when my hearing experience was still low. A friend brought over the Sennheiser IE800 and I listened to it for hours. At that time, it was a lot better than anything I’ve ever heard. And I listened for hours. I knew it was good but I couldn’t understand what made it good or what was good about it, other than that it was "good". 

Fast forward to 2026. If I listened to the IE 800 now, I can comment about its soundstage, separation, imaging, tonality, smoothness, transparency. Level of graininess. The list goes on. 

Lately, I've been super anal about the dynamic range of music, especially dynamic range of the midrange and the treble.

 I bet one of my 100 to 200 dollar Asian inspired wonderful sounding aliexpress cables from my cable stash sounds better than that 4500 dollar kimber wire.

I bet cunning Kimber bought his wire from Asia for 20 bucks and sold it to you suckers for $4500.

 

 

deep_333

2,385 posts

04-18-2026 at 09:47pm 

 I bet one of my 100 to 200 dollar Asian inspired wonderful sounding aliexpress cables from my cable stash sounds better than that 4500 dollar kimber wire.

I bet cunning Kimber bought his wire from Asia for 20 bucks and sold it to you suckers for $4500.
 

Yeah the old sneaky Ray’s at it. Making cheap chinese cables great again. 
And what are “Asian inspired” cables? Do they have any flavor like lo mein or ramen noodles? Are they Asian inspired or chinese fakes of American high end cables?