When you're making a recording, you use the cables that you have and you change your control settings, your mics, your mic positioning, or whatever else you have to, to make it sound right on your monitoring system. In short, you compensate for your cables just as you compensate for everything else to make the recording sound good or accurate or whatever your sonic goal may be. After the recording is made, however, you can't compensate IN the recording, so you either compensate FOR the recording or take it as it is and comment on its sonics as you get them. For your information, more and more top recording and movie studios are using upgraded cables as a recognized source of improvement in sound quality, and finding that it works. RSX is already in the planning stage for a line of professional cables intended specifically for that market, so you can plan on hearing better-sounding recording sometime in the near future.

I agree absolutely. As I wrote in another publication, some years ago I wanted to give a system as a gift to my sister, who had nothing at all other than her TV. I also wanted to be able to do it for no more than five hundred dollars for the whole thing. (This was probably back in the 1980s, when $500 was still worth something.) The way I did it was, just as you describe, to use the flaws of one part of the system to compensate for opposite flaws in another part. (Using a too "bright" Thing A to compensate for too "dark" Thing B) This worked just fine,, and, because my sister would never be upgrading the system, was all that was needed to give her an enjoyable home music source. In this article, I make a different assumption, though: I assume that the system WILL be changed and upgraded over time. If you start out using your cables as "tone controls" to tame a system flaw, when you fix that flaw with an unflawed (or flawed in a different way) other component, you will then have to change your cables to eliminate what was a positive benefit before. That means buying more cables. If your cable choice is neutral to begin with, that additional (and possibly multiply repetitive) need will be eliminated and you'll have the further benefit of actually being able to hear what your other stuff sounds like so you can make your upgrade decisions effectively and not have to keep on making the same changes (preamp after preamp or whatever else after whatever else) over and over again, spending more and more money every time.

I'll visit various dealers and manufacturers around the country plug in and listen. I appreciate your article about how to audition.