Letter from Bill at Darwin Cables

Note from Bill at Darwin Cables.

I’m the first person to say that there is no connection in high-end audio between price and performance. Also, there is a lot of bad science in audio. Both are true, especially with cables. I’ve heard some very good $50 cables and some bad $1200 cables. There are a number of companies that make and sell 1M RCA cable sets for $20,000 and higher. Read that again. Just because a cable is expensive is no guarantee of great performance.

Someone on the YouTube discussion commented that “great cables don’t make things sound great; they just do the least damage to the signal”. Bingo! I agree completely. Kudos to that comment. The perfect cable has no effect on the signal. It’s just a conduit that carries a small voltage from point A to point B. If the recording sucks, you wouldn’t expect a great stereo to fix that. It will present that suckiness to you with utmost honesty. Thus, my philosophy is that the perfect cable is entirely transparent. I am not claiming to build the perfect cable; that doesn’t exist. I guess I could say in jest my cables suck the least?

As for the cynics, I feel you too.   Cynicism is healthy; it prevents people from being taken advantage of.  The inverse is to keep an open mind so you don’t stop learning and perhaps miss out on benefiting from new things.  I was seriously bullied 12 years ago into trying cryogenics on the metal components.  I thought it was a waste of time and money, but the results were easily discernible.  I sum it up as, “be cynical but keep an open mind”.  I think that’s possible.

The next issue to work out is cost/benefit. This is obviously a hobby with greatly diminishing returns. A $50,000 system is not five times better than a $10,000 system. It’s not even twice as good. So why spend that money? I work for a well-known amplifier manufacturer, so between that and cables, I talk about audio quite a lot. I am often asked: is the difference between that $4,000 integrated amp and $10,000 separates worth it. My response is always the same, “I can’t answer that question for you, that’s between your ears and your checking account”. I know it sounds a little like I’m being a wise ass, but it’s so darn subjective. It would be like me telling you what your favorite flavor of ice cream ought to be.

I know many people feel “locked out” of buying an $800 cable or $20K speakers. I know I can’t afford the speakers I’d like to have. Nobody needs an $800 cable or any super expensive component to have an excellent system and enjoy their music. For years, my living room system was all vintage and DIY stuff that I cobbled together for under a grand. I got ten great years from that system and so much pleasure. As I said, nobody needs any high-end gear. For what it’s worth, for two years I’ve been trying to design/build/sell a cable based on copper that follows the same design principles and delivers most of the performance for a [much] more generally attainable price.