[Radio Wrangler]

This thread has acted as a relief-valve and has probably improved the quality of the rest of the forum by mopping up comments on audio tomphoolery. I don't suppose anyone would get upset if it got deleted and put out with the toxic waste. Preserving this thread isn't going to help anyone at some future time fix a vintage radio or amplifier. Posterity will get along just fine without it. Perhaps future anthropologists would be interested?

Audiophoolery is not a harmless foible, though. It has distorted the prices of what should otherwise simply be spare parts for classic equipment. It has polluted general knowledge with all sorts of unsubstantiated beliefs. If you go into a mass market electronics shop they'll try to 'upsell' silly wires. Their motive is simple profit and bonus schemes, of course, just as with pushing extended warranties.

What I find scariest is the suspension of curiosity. I'm in a tiny minority in wondering just how directional wire is made directional. I use electrical conductors from DC to microwave frequencies where most imperfections and stray effects are greatly magnified, yet I've not seen the effects that are claimed to exist at audio.

If I had personally experienced some of the effects I've seen described, I'd dig and dig until I'd found what the mechanism was and understood it. I'm disappointed in people who are convinced they can hear something very special but aren't driven to investigate it

David