Paul McGowan writes: I smiled when one of the posters on our Community Forums quoted another company’s slogan “no cable is better than any cable” explaining how their wireless approach is superior to a hard wired ethernet connection. I smiled because they lifted one of our long term slogans “there’s no preamp like no preamp”.
When we came up with that slogan, many years ago, it had a very specific meaning that is more accurately stated “there’s nothing better than nothing” meaning if it’s possible to remove one piece of gear in the audio chain, it’s a better, cleaner approach. In our case we encourage people to replace their preamplifier with nothing – going directly into a power amp from their DAC.
Replacing one piece of gear for another doesn’t really do justice to the slogan. If you replace an ethernet connection with a wireless transmitter and receiver, you haven’t replaced something with nothing you’ve simply replaced one thing with another. Small point? Perhaps.
If you’re going to borrow a slogan, at least get it right.
But it does highlight the absurdity of claiming that one digital cable is better than another. With a cable, the fact there’s a physical wire there allows people to focus on it as an outlet for their audio superstitions. Obviously a better quality cable must in some way, no matter how small, affect the sound, they say. But substitute fresh air for the cable and suddenly the focus for that superstition is gone and along with it the ‘obviousness’ of the link between cable quality and sound.