When the late, great Bill Shankley, manager of Liverpool Football Club, 1959-74, stated that “Football isn’t a matter of life or death. It’s much more important than that.” he might just as well have been talking about audiophiles and the equipment they do or don’t buy. More specifically, the equipment they believe in — and the equipment they don’t. To read the bile, vitriol and vicious personal attacks that regularly flow through the online outpourings of the various audio forums is to shake one’s head in wonder at just how upset and angry some people get on the subject of audio. But the really remarkable thing is the aggression directed not at those who criticize a commentator’s own choices, but at those who invest in something he or she disapproves of — and there’s no bigger red rag than cables in general and power cables in particular. Seriously — there are those who believe that jail is way too good for those manufacturers who knowingly defraud the public by offering such devices — who clearly believe that the public needs protecting and that the way to do it is through lynch mobs, although online equivalents will have to suffice.
The problem is that whilst audio (especially other people’s audio) really isn’t a matter of life and death, there are situations where cables, especially better cables, really are. And let’s be clear: by “better,” I mean cables with superior performance, in exactly the areas those fancy audio power cords and distribution devices claim to deliver.
~ Roy Gregory, Reviewer at The Audio Beat