You all have thoroughly confused this newbie (as measured by total hours behind a DAW)!

After 5 years or more of reading (and SOS is my audio bible!), I had come to believe the Holy Grail of audio recording and monitoring equipment was accurate reproduction, with any effects to be added after the fact and totally at the discretion of the engineer. For example, SOS reviews of preamps will often have as a "Con" - some phrase like, "not the flattest/cleanest response, but the effect can be useful in certain circumstances". Similarly that's why, for example (I believed!), we don't use hi-fi speakers to mix with - dispassionate (and sometimes cruel) accurate sound reproduction is the goal, regardless of whether it sounds "better", or flatters the sound.

Now I read that some highly esteemed and respected (by me!) SOS-ers are saying they could see buying these cables because they "sound better".

How do I reconcile these two points of view? If (as an absurd example to try and make a point) a frequency analysis of the cable showed it magically added high frequency harmonics like an exciter, wouldn't that make it unsuitable for use, even though it "sounds better"? I thought "better" wasn't even a relevant concept when discussing recording equipment ... only "accurate" was ...

Thanks for sorting me out - my terra firma of basic audio recording goals and concepts seems a little shaky to me right now!

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Alexis -Cubase 6.5.0/SX3.1.1.944, XP SP2, 4GB RAM (1GB not accessible, but used just to balance the computer so it doesn't tip over); Delta 66 in Omni i/O Studio; Motif8; UAD-1

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