I bought Roger Sanders' InnerSound preamp, and talked with him several times by phone, as well as having read the white paper. He is definitely a "green eye-shade and slide-rule" kind of a guy. Not one to go anywhere near the deep end of the audiophile pool when it comes to cables (or anything else) and tweakage, he believes in applying solid science to audio reproduction. About cables in particular, he seems to take the position that most high-end products are underdesigned and overpriced, and that if they have different "sounds", it is because they are coloring the signal due to improper design.
I have not heard his speakers or amps, but they have been very well-reviewed, as many of you will know. Just talking to him, I do not think he is insensitive to subjective sonic qualities. He does, however, seem to believe in the efficacy of ABX testing, as well as the notion that everything one can hear is subject to measurement, concepts I do not share his faith in. His assertion that all "well-designed" interconnects *should* sound the same may well be true, but to me this observation is of little use in the real world - who decides the criteria for what is "well-designed" or not?
To most audiophiles, the fact of life is that different seemingly well-designed and manufactured ICs *do* sound different from one another, and which among them is "correct" is an inherently subjective call - one which is also inherently system-dependent. I tend to agree with him *in theory*, that when it comes to ICs, better is just plain better as far as transmitting the signal with the least possible degradation is concerned, as opposed to speaker cables, where component/cable interactions will play a bigger role and tend to result in different perspectives on "better" that are even more system-dependent.
Roger has offered to ship me some of his ICs to try out with a 30-day trial, but I haven't taken him up on it, mostly because I'm already pretty well-outfitted with 'em here, having just added a few new ones to the collection that I'm still evaluating. But I have to admit that my declining to accept also has something to do with his white paper stance on the issue leading me to suspect he won't listen any more deeply to ICs than his theories will allow him to do. After all, there already are many inexpensive, yet solidly designed ICs on the market, both from companies that also offer higher-priced models, and some from companies that, like InnerSound, don't venture into the more rarified price strata, and I haven't heard any of them sound as good as some more costly ones from the usual high-end marques.
Maybe I am missing the boat and should try his ICs out. If I do, first I have to finish finalizing the set-up of my system in my new room, and also of auditioning the preamp of his I bought, which shows a lot of promise so far, despite a few operational compatability issues which I haven't laid the blame for quite yet. But either way, though his paper makes for provocative reading and I am sure is theoretically sound, Roger is still a guy with a product to sell at the end of the day, and I for one won't be convinced of anything that someone claims is the only right approach simply because of their words, no matter how well-argued. (I also don't believe that his preamp with gain and attenuation is indistinguishable at the unity setting from a short piece of simple wire, as he claims a listening panel found under his test conditions.)
BTW, if I remember correctly, I do believe that Roger's defense of coaxial design as being the best in speaker cables was mostly intended to apply to electrostatic speakers, such as InnerSound's own models are.
