[R-390] Weird-ass power cord?

[Bill Hawkins]

Francesco Ledda wrote:

"I am amazed that people will spend this kind of money for such things.  I
went through their on line catalog, and I am shocked. It is hard to believe
so much money for so little."

Well, I really shouldn't do this, but you brought it up . . .

I, too, was amazed when I first became aware of audiophoolery.
It was in an upscale audio store around 1980, where the salesman
showed me a vacuum tube preamp and gushed about its sound qualities.
I'd been playing with audio since the 50's and built tube amps. The
60's brought the promise of extremely low distortion and higher power
with transistors, and the instruments showed it to be true. However,
everyone in audio knew that the speakers were the limiting factor
for sound quality, and still are.

You need four things in humans to get to where we are today, and we
all have them to some degree:

First you need a drive to be somehow better than everyone else.
One name for this is "ego." A famous example of a king-sized ego
is the fable of "The Emperor's New Clothes." On a lesser scale,
it's called "keeping up with the Joneses." This drive has survival
value, so it's in all of us - in varying intensities.

Next you need the ability to acquire the thing that you have become
convinced will make you better. You need to be able to pay for it,
or to form a group of like-minded people who will help you take it.
Paying is usually much less trouble than taking, but taking works.

You need ignorance of the principles of the thing you covet, so that
you are unable to analyze, evaluate and make a rational decision
on your own. You have to rely on words created by other people.

Finally, you need to be convinced that even though you don't really
understand it, everyone else in your group believes in it (except
for those few pesky skeptics - most people are happy to be part of
a group rather than be skeptics).

Now you need someone who will take advantage of your drive, ability
and ignorance by developing a product and building an image that
everybody who is anybody either has one or wants it. The range of
what "it" could be depends on the extent of ignorance.

Getting you to buy "it" is the job of Advertising. For that to work,
you need visual media like magazines that specialize in similar things,
or newspapers and TV if the ignorance is general (or if a strong
emotional appeal is possible, like sex or power).

If you got this far, look at the review of in-wall power cable at:
http://www.jpslabs.com/Reviews2/inwall1.htm

As a master of deception, he writes a chatty review for a magazine
that is full of praise for the improvements in his system. But the
improvements are mostly from a larger listening room. Then he talks
about the in-wall cable improvements, but the gains are much less.
You are expecting gains, though, so the earlier description of the
benefits (not related to the cable) is the one that will stick in
your mind.

Add to that the fact that you can afford it, and that it will make
you feel better about your system and yourself, and the sale is certain.
Now you become part of the crowd that believes in "it" and you take
every opportunity to tell your friends how good "it" is, which puts
them into "gotta have it" mode.

Soon you have a growing economy based on human drives, emotions and
ignorance. Is it any wonder that our schools are being dumbed down?

Bill Hawkins