What’s always funny about all things audiophile, is that the cost of production and return on volume sold is probably in line with the price of the product (if you ignore companies like Monster that charge $90 for $1 worth of product, but I don’t consider them audiophile anyhow). However, the delta between cost/performance of these uber cables and .05 a foot copper wire is astronomical.
If someone wants that last 0.0000000000000001% of audio fidelity that’s lacking from the $3.99 pair of Radio Shack interconnects … there is no option but the mega-expensive five-figure-price-tag placebo effect interconnects. Anything less will not suffice. It takes shelling out an absurd amount of money to convince some folks of the superior quality. Buyers remorse notwithstanding.
My favorite thing is when you terminate the uber wire with rca, banana or clamps so you can connect them to your speaker and amp. They don’t seem to notice that the gazzillion dollar cable is actually being conducted by a .0001 cent set screw + conductor band that is in contact with .00000000000000000001 of the cable. Truly funny.
While working at a U2 concert a few years ago I heard somebody scream stop to a driver, you’re about to drive over a $14,000 cable man. I said to myself maybe I should get in the cable business Indeed some cables are very expensive.
My Cable man charges $40/hr for home visits, which he seems to need to do at least once or twice a year. But anyway, that is almost $80,000 per annum, I’m guessing the mixing engineer either was intentionally low-balling, or it’s some promotional opportunity by the cable company.
And that is just labor, doesn’t even include parts.