There's really no limit in the world of business as to what product you can sell as long as marketeers can create the demand. That's what marketing is, creating demand.
There was never a need for disposable razor blades but Gillette was able to create the demand for them and now you have 3-bladed and 4-bladed disposables that turn on the profit faucets to Gillette. And I might live long enough to see 10-bladed disposable razors.
There was never a need for walkman radios and players but Sony successfully marketed the concept and now the MP3 players are just your technological evolution for them. And for most young people, they can't live without them.
There was never a need for cellphones with cameras and video/audio capabilities but the demand for them now is such that virtually no one buys a cellphone these days without them.
And there was never a need for Havaianas for such lowly slippers and you now see them everywhere. My goodness, $20 for a pair of slippers? But I can understand, if you can have a high demand for $500 Bally and Bruno Magli shoes, why not slippers?
If slippers can be priced so expensively, why not cables? You have a large market looking for something new and cables have sprung up as a profitable industry on its own backed by so called new "breakthrough" researches on the behavior of cable properties to justify pricing their modified cables so high. I assure you there is nothing about cables that have not been understood by our great grandfathers but are only now being hyped to ridiculous levels to create a demand for exotic alambre.
The only cables I know that can really make dramatic differences in conduction are the nitrogen-cooled super conductors used in particle accelerators. See if you can have one for your sound system.
And you won't hear any argument from me about a "day-and-night" difference some people claim to hear with exotic cables.
I don't think these cable scammers are allied with the high-end audiophile gears. But the marketing logic is there.
If there's a demand for high end players, amps and speakers, why not have high end cables as well? Great. The only difference is that high end audiophile gears do have something superior in them to show for their ridiculous prices, such as a tank-like bullet-proof build you can find in Perraux and Bryston amps. Or a 20 year transferable warranty only Bryston offers. Or a turntable with a massive platter that depends on sheer inertia to silence out rumble noise that no mass turntable can offer.
But cables? I hate to say it but I tend to agree with audioholics that this is a SCAM in the audiophile industry. There is absolutely nothing in cables you can do to make it more transparent than just using pure 99.99% material, having uniform built throughout its length, getting the right gauge for the length one needs and making the proper terminations. Most of their claimed benefits from altering the geometry and reactive qualities of their cable apply only to frequencies outside human hearing. Anything you do to alter the reactive qualities of cables high enough to matter in the audio passband will just increase ruining the audio signals that go through it. And you pay top money for that? Now if you use nitrogen-cooled superconductors, that's a different story.
But hey, if you can afford them, why not? I don't mind using havaianas. In fact I also have pabder and florsheim shoes. Like I said, there's always the joy of having expensive stuff around the house.
Now if only I can afford the new Rolls Royce Phantom even if I know its sybaritic luxury is not twice that of a new Camry or its technologies and materials no better than a BMW 7 series. But the heads turning and jaws dropping as you drive down the road on a Phantom would be priceless.
