Master/slave link

[IanG-UK]

One of the reasons why Quad's business failed, when in UK hands, was that they never made much money in the good days, in part because Peter Walker was of the opinion that you should sell customers what they need rather than what they want. Hence a 24 year gap between loudspeaker releases and typically a 10 year gap between amplifier releases.

In the market of "big boys toys", that is generally a flawed approach - so we are inundated by multiple releases conferring allegedly significant improvements in cars, sporting equipment and audio/video equipment; and by questionable ancillaries. And by manufacturers aligning themselves with consumer flavours even if, privately, they think those alignments make no measurable or practical difference.

I'm sure I have spent silly money on cables and connectors and tweaks which I would claim are improvements (or did at the time of purchase) but which I could not prove through rigorous measurement and verifiable listening tests. I am quite happy that I have been "placeboed".

And this is the way it will remain, specifically on cables, in my opinion. I cannot remember any magazine testing of this general nature since the Quad test in, I guess, the early 70s when the listening panel (itself a flawed approach) could not distinguish between a Quad ll, a Quad 303 and a Quad 405. And reviewers best equipped to do such tests now, people like Colloms, Miller and Sircom, will never expose themselves to the risk of failure.

It would be far better if we adopted the expression "I think I can hear a difference" to "there is a difference" and then we would all be happier. Possibly.