I don’t know Al. Someone who designs electronics as opposed to wires seems like comparing apples to oranges.
One of my friends is the gentleman who designs Stealth cables. He is willing to discuss at length the design features of his cables. But after hooking them up in many systems there is no need. Whew!
It would be fun (or excruciating) to listen to Sergei and Galen compare notes.
How many geniuses does it take to screw in a light bulb?
If they are bright enough you may not need a light bulb!
It isn’t a matter of not respecting the design basis and methodology. It is a matter of potentially drawing a line at influencing factors that cannot be fully explained by mathematical models. As I said a missed opportunity.
By the way I have had Iconoclast products, speaker cables, and still do have, interconnects, scattered about here and there. So I am most aware of their strengths and weaknesses.
Truly a Godot moment, as in Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot.
An existential exercise, as they discus ad infinitum the ways to achieve the result.
All design projects have to draw a bar at some point in the physics and calculations. Not shooting the engineer and selling the product is the most problamatic outcome. The nature of an engineer, is to act exactly as you suggest, try to make it perfect…one more thing over and over.
I’ve never seen anything that looked at properly…and once eventually tamed, can’t be modeled with math. But you can’t make the model until you can reproduce the effect repeatedly. This is a good thing as it is an opportunity tamed and put to good use and reliably. An effect that is “wild” can’t be optimized for consistent sale. The last thing we want is a product that varies even when we suggest it isn’t. That’s not a good place to be.
Best,
Galen
If I was in the biz of making/selling audio cables (or any audio product), I would work to make the cost-no-limits best product that could be made.
There are so many mid tier cables to choose from. I would want to differentiate myself from others–cost no object.
We need to move back to ICONOCLAST Cable, we messed up this link. Sorry, I apologize.
But, I think Ron means the best performing, cost as little to do with absolute performance. Japanese cars were designed well with poor quality materials and was a better gamble than American cars with less well engineered designs but superior materials. That was in the 1990’s. That’s converged over time. Material and design quality are closer to parity today.
Even expensive stuff follows the value rule. I bought the admittedly expensive Porsche Panamera because it was a “value” for an exotic. Higher volume helps the price. Some say it isn’t exotic because it doesn’t cost enough! Fair statement and why I bought it. Performance that didn’t come with the astronomical price. Audio is much the same. Find the 80% performance at 20% of the price stuff (buy used!).
I am in the business of making and designing cable and we need products like ICONCLAST that leverage performance over price. There are already plenty that price to the moon and use materials to justify those prices. I’d rather pay for good intellectual property, not a bucket of expensive plastic, metal and textiles that looks like a cable. ICONOCLAST leverged the IP, and price was far, far, secondary. Blue Jeans was hesitant to work with what these had to sell for to match the current commodity line-items ratio of cost to retail margins. We felt that the value and performance was there, and it is, to justify the products existence. It is a Panamera kind of car, not a Bugatti. Both expensive but one excessively so with little real performance difference. We’re not here to take over the cable world, just offer a value alternative with sound (pun) and well explained engineering.
Best,
Galen
I appreciate your kind words! You are the best! lol
That’s well said, and I can understand it fully too😁
I agree, at some point a line must be drawn in the sand. That said I continuously pushed my design team to think out of the box, pushing them out of their comfort zone and rewarding meaningful innovations.
Iconoclast makes for a fine mid-line series of wire when properly matched to components. There are other options that deliver more, some at significantly greater cost.
Two blindfolded audiophile chose a cheap speaker cable over a Gryphon $20k speaker cable. Check this out…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPlwcZaJzKw&ab_channel=Jay%27sAudioLab
Yes, most poeple find Jay repulsive, but some of the stuff he comes out with amuses me.
After a cable is broken in, I find that there is not much settling needed even sitting cold for awhile. I believe the Gryphon is just not a great cable. My SR Galileo, I hear it first time and every time it is put in after the break-in.
Maybe you should go to Home Depot and do the lamp cord challenge vs. SR cable. We have all had the wool pulled over our heads!
I don’t have to. I had a few audiophile friends come over and heard what these cables sounded like, and even brought the Galileo SX to a friend’s house and he kept saying sh_t, sh_t… when we compared it to his Anaysis Plus speaker cable. He said all the instruments had more separation and was more 3D with the Galileo. He went out and bought a pair of SX’s right away.
We like what we like. No one needs to justify their choices, I don’t. This is just a hobby after all.
You better be careful, you might hurt someone’s feelings.
My mother wouldn’t like that.