Kimber cable "how much"

EYEREX · 30 May 2012 at 11:42

In the past i've bought a few cables from Russ Andrews who sell Kimber cable in the UK and each mouth they send me a catalogue of there new stuff but was a bit shocked at the price for KS-6038-SD II speaker cable

Just made me wonder what sort of setup someone would have to even think of paying that sort of price for cable

The best setup i've ever heard was a full Naim setup with electrostatic speakers at PJHifi one day which made my jaw drop with the sound

realBabelfish · 30 May 2012 at 11:59

is there any realworld difference or is it snake oil like hdmi cables?

£28,328.00 for an 11ft cable?!?!?1 w t f!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

that would mean a 1million pound system to justify it?!?!

TheVoice · 30 May 2012 at 12:22

What a load of nonsense.

Marsman · 30 May 2012 at 12:47

Cable for people with more money than sense. I'm open to the possibility that higher end cable can improve SQ with higher end gear, but several thousand £ for 2.4m of cable?

realBabelfish · 30 May 2012 at 13:36

Marsman said:
Cable for people with more money than sense. I'm open to the possibility that higher end cable can improve SQ with higher end gear, but several thousand £ for 2.4m of cable?

i would love to be a billionaire and build the best home cinema ever. i wonder how much it would cost if you bought top of the range everything? i would love to hear it!

shanestatham · 30 May 2012 at 16:39

Its pathetic, but a fool and his money and all that!

a 3 quid cable from a auction site would be just as good

Grimley · 30 May 2012 at 18:50

More fool them to anyone who buys these & say they can hear the difference between them & a cable that costs 100 times less. OK I'll buy a decent interconnect as the standard ones supplied with hardware are pants, but those prices beggars belief. :eek:

Vonhelmet · 30 May 2012 at 19:17

I doubt anyone in the world could successfully ABX that against something costing 1/10 or even 1/100 of the price.

lucid · 30 May 2012 at 22:24

EYEREX said:
In the past i've bought a few cables from Russ Andrews who sell Kimber cable in the UK and each mouth they send me a catalogue of there new stuff but was a bit shocked at the price for KS-6038-SD II speaker cable

Just made me wonder what sort of setup someone would have to even think of paying that sort of price for cable

The best setup i've ever heard was a full Naim setup with electrostatic speakers at PJHifi one day which made my jaw drop with the sound

It's all degrees of madness. One can level the same argument at any high-end pursuit: musical instruments, motor vehicles, wine, food, watches, computers. How many people would understand spending £600+ on a graphics card when a whole computer can be bought for less? Can a bottle of wine really be worth tens of thousands of pounds. Is a Bugatti Veyron really worth £900,000 more than a Nissan Skyline GTR to go a fraction of a second faster from 0 to 60. Does an Omega or a Breitling or a Rolex tell the time any more accurately than a £20 digital watch. Is a Damien Hurst or Trace Emmin really worth the thousands they fetch? Reducing all of these to a simple equation based on one persons concept of value for money misses the point completely.

To point a finger and laugh is ignorant. To judge purely on what is provable with measurement is narrow minded. How can one measure the taste of an outstanding vintage, or quantify the value of a Matisse or Da Vinci purely on the cost of paint and canvass?

oli collett · 30 May 2012 at 22:33

lucid said:
It's all degrees of madness. One can level the same argument at any high-end pursuit: musical instruments, motor vehicles, wine, food, watches, computers. How many people would understand spending £600+ on a graphics card when a whole computer can be bought for less? Can a bottle of wine really be worth tens of thousands of pounds. Is a Bugatti Veyron really worth £900,000 more than a Nissan Skyline GTR to go a fraction of a second faster from 0 to 60. Does an Omega or a Breitling or a Rolex tell the time any more accurately than a £20 digital watch. Is a Damien Hurst or Trace Emmin really worth the thousands they fetch? Reducing all of these to a simple equation based on one persons concept of value for money misses the point completely.

To point a finger and laugh is ignorant. To judge purely on what is provable with measurement is narrow minded. How can one measure the taste of an outstanding vintage, or quantify the value of a Matisse or Da Vinci purely on the cost of paint and canvass?

Sorry - What? You're comparing a magic cable with a Bugatti Veyron? A piece of artwork?

I think you're the one missing the point here. Take your art example - there's two blank canvases you can hang on your wall. One costs £10,000, another £1. Oh, and no-one will even see these canvases. If someone buys the £10,000 one, pointing and laughing seems quite a natural thing to do.

JonnyGLC · 30 May 2012 at 23:31

lucid said:
It's all degrees of madness. One can level the same argument at any high-end pursuit: musical instruments, motor vehicles, wine, food, watches, computers. How many people would understand spending £600+ on a graphics card when a whole computer can be bought for less? Can a bottle of wine really be worth tens of thousands of pounds. Is a Bugatti Veyron really worth £900,000 more than a Nissan Skyline GTR to go a fraction of a second faster from 0 to 60. Does an Omega or a Breitling or a Rolex tell the time any more accurately than a £20 digital watch. Is a Damien Hurst or Trace Emmin really worth the thousands they fetch? Reducing all of these to a simple equation based on one persons concept of value for money misses the point completely.

To point a finger and laugh is ignorant. To judge purely on what is provable with measurement is narrow minded. How can one measure the taste of an outstanding vintage, or quantify the value of a Matisse or Da Vinci purely on the cost of paint and canvass?

There's PROVEN differences between all of those things you just mentioned. Speaker cable at that price = snake oil x 10000.

Rich_L · 30 May 2012 at 23:42

Would make your 128kbps MP3s sound sex though

TheVoice · 30 May 2012 at 23:48

lucid said:
It's all degrees of madness. One can level the same argument at any high-end pursuit: musical instruments, motor vehicles, wine, food, watches, computers. How many people would understand spending £600+ on a graphics card when a whole computer can be bought for less? Can a bottle of wine really be worth tens of thousands of pounds. Is a Bugatti Veyron really worth £900,000 more than a Nissan Skyline GTR to go a fraction of a second faster from 0 to 60. Does an Omega or a Breitling or a Rolex tell the time any more accurately than a £20 digital watch. Is a Damien Hurst or Trace Emmin really worth the thousands they fetch? Reducing all of these to a simple equation based on one persons concept of value for money misses the point completely.

To point a finger and laugh is ignorant. To judge purely on what is provable with measurement is narrow minded. How can one measure the taste of an outstanding vintage, or quantify the value of a Matisse or Da Vinci purely on the cost of paint and canvass?

The only madness here is that of the people who would buy such a cable. It's really not comparable to any of the things you've mentioned, at all.

lucid · 31 May 2012 at 00:33

oli collett said:
Sorry - What? You're comparing a magic cable with a Bugatti Veyron? A piece of artwork?

One: I am not defending this particular cable but rather the general principle that cable is as valid a system component as a CD player or amp or speakers. Two: The point of the comparisons is to show that reducing everything to its component values is a flawed approach. For example, the value of the canvas and paint is minimal, but how those items are used and the desirability of the final product is what creates value.

lucid · 31 May 2012 at 00:50

JonnyGLC said:
There's PROVEN differences between all of those things you just mentioned.

Really? How many more seconds does a Breitling count in a year than a Casio digital? Exactly how much better in percentage terms is Edvard Munch compared to Titian? Wheres the measurement data that shows how much fun a Ferrari F40 is to drive?

Measurements tell us stuff about measurable things. That's all.

lucid · 31 May 2012 at 01:12

TheVoice said:
The only madness here is that of the people who would buy such a cable. It's really not comparable to any of the things you've mentioned, at all.

In your opinion.

Ask the average British car buyer if they would pay £1.7 million for a Veyron and you're likely to get the same sort of answer. Just because something exists that is a lot of money, and that few of us are capable of fully appreciating, it doesn't automatically mean that isn't worth the money.

Rroff · 31 May 2012 at 01:29

lucid said:
It's all degrees of madness. One can level the same argument at any high-end pursuit: musical instruments, motor vehicles, wine, food, watches, computers. How many people would understand spending £600+ on a graphics card when a whole computer can be bought for less? Can a bottle of wine really be worth tens of thousands of pounds. Is a Bugatti Veyron really worth £900,000 more than a Nissan Skyline GTR to go a fraction of a second faster from 0 to 60. Does an Omega or a Breitling or a Rolex tell the time any more accurately than a £20 digital watch. Is a Damien Hurst or Trace Emmin really worth the thousands they fetch? Reducing all of these to a simple equation based on one persons concept of value for money misses the point completely.

To point a finger and laugh is ignorant. To judge purely on what is provable with measurement is narrow minded. How can one measure the taste of an outstanding vintage, or quantify the value of a Matisse or Da Vinci purely on the cost of paint and canvass?

Its more like paying £20 for a digital watch or £300 for the same watch but with a cheap fake silver paint sprayed on it.

inogen · 31 May 2012 at 03:23

I can't believe in this day and age people still buy "hifi" cable.

And Lucid, yes you can break this down to components. It's cable. It's a component. It's like someone owning a Veyron and spending 10s of thousands of pounds on "special" spark plugs.

In fact it's worse than that. It's a piece of wire. It's not even spark plugs.

oli collett · 31 May 2012 at 07:25

lucid said:
One: I am not defending this particular cable but rather the general principle that cable is as valid a system component as a CD player or amp or speakers.

Yes, but that principle has never been proven to come into effect at over £1-2/meter

lucid said:
Two: The point of the comparisons is to show that reducing everything to its component values is a flawed approach. For example, the value of the canvas and paint is minimal, but how those items are used and the desirability of the final product is what creates value.

You missed the point I was making. No-one is going to tell any difference between this cable and another costing £2/m - unless they've added something to the cable to alter the sound in some way to make it less accurate. How can that be considered "value"? It's quite easy to demonstrate that one cable sounds different from another, but I don't believe kimber cable have ever put forward any research that does this, even though you would think it would be a fundamental part of R & D in such an expensive product!

the shadow · 31 May 2012 at 07:54

what quality wire do they put inside speakers :confused: