Someone should make a little $100 box that implements a tunable band-pass filter to put in the interconnect lines. I bet that you could make such a box with some knobs that would let you make your interconnect sound like "silver" or "copper" or "quantum equalized equipotential polarized dialectric" cables. Zip cord plus a box like this would be as good as any $15000 cable.
That's the Carver "theory" applied to cables... And it is not true. A "box" with passive or active components does not behave the same as a transmission line in regard to RF handling or even in regard to the full audio spectrum. You are making a big simplification of what should be analyzed by Maxwell equations and perhaps simplified to distributed network. The "box" theory says that it all can be simplified into an "ideal" transmission line plus ideal basic components. That's known in engineering as the first-order approximation. It's good for predicting basic directions, not for details.
BTW, you can simplify the concept even further by putting an equalizer in the chain. If all these transfer functions are linear then you can "bundle" them together!
Some online magazine measured and published Nordost Valhalla capacitance curve. No passive components that I can think about can do that...
Equalizers do some good in some systems but they are not "sonically-free", whether active or passive. If you bother to reach the highest levels of audio reproduction then you will take the extreme pain to match the most basic components and avoid additions to the signal chain.
On the other hand, I plan to audition Transparent cables on the advice of a friend. Through their extensive R&D, they may have found ways to make my system better, and that's worth listening to.
Ah, and then your emotions take over... It won't make a difference, but heck let's have a listen... :-)
Be strong and resist the urge, Mate... :-)
Or, listen and think whether this set of cables seems to do a better job conveying the music compared to what you have. I'm not saying the particular one does or doesn't, but only listening in your own system can tell you the whole story.
Of course if you know the "formula" of this cable or the circuit for that amplifier - you can build them yourself. The question is how much is it worth to you... To some people an interconnect is worth $50 max and even when they hear a better set they won't spend the money. To other people money is no object. Most of us fall somewhere in between... See - we were just reduced to an "average"... :-)
But somtimes, just sometimes, the emotions take over. Like my friend that needed to rebuild his garage and one day I go to visit and he has a $40K dCS digital front-end - and no garage... The mysteries of the mind... :-(
