Seven Shiny Pennies

From Audio Basics, Volume Seven, Number 10, October, 1988

Do you want these sevens shiny pennies or that old tarnished quarter?

Everyone remember trying that little trick on their favorite three year old at some time, and knows that the little three year old will take the seven shiny pennies every time!

Do you want a 12" woofer or an 8" woofer?

Do you want 80 watts or 70 watts?

Do you want eighteen bits or sixteen bits?

Do you want these real thick gold plated cables or those old skinny cables?

Do you want three laser beams or just one laser beam?

Do you get the message?

Friends, a significant portion of the market will still take those "seven shiny pennies" every time, as adults – and a significant portion of the sales efforts being made out there is to reinforce that ignorance and to sell you those pennies – for the price of the quarter, of course.

I get sick whenever some polished yuppy salesman starts talking to me about "perceived value." That is exactly the same as the old piece of advice that the best way to get rid of your garbage is to wrap it in a fancy package and leave it on the seat in the bus. Beware when the sales pitch starts talking perceived value - the con man is simply trying to reinforce your idea that the shine on the pennies is really nifty and desirable.

Did you ever wonder how this country can consistently elect a president from one party, have the Senate's control much closer balanced, have the control of the House remain in the hands of the other party, and find, at the local level that your elected officers have no real correlation with who is in power nationally?

That, dear readers, is an easy question to answer. It is simply that as you move further away from the great national offices, less "marketing" of the election takes place. At the national level, elections are almost wholly determined by marketing efforts these days - an ideal situation to put retired second rate movie stars into office. As you move closer and closer to home, the less money is available for the professional marketing and packaging efforts, and the more the elections are determined on actual substance. At the local level, almost no marketing takes place at all (it costs too much), and thus you get to elect your officials based upon your knowledge of them personally and the real local issues of interest to you.

It is no surprise that national and local election results don't corollate. At the national level you have been marketed to death, at the local level you still have a chance, if you choose, to think.

Remember that Van Alstine's definition of marketing is, "Using fraud and deception to sell crud to fools."

My regret is that because of the significant negative education going on in all fields of endeavor these days, I have to take more and more time combating marketing brainwashing and thus less of our time and resources are available to inform potential clients about the virtues of our efforts.

For example, what do you say when a customer calls asking if you have speakers with 12" woofers? Even the giant B&W 808's have 30 mm woofers — not quite 12". When you tell the caller that no, your best speakers do not have 12" woofers but they do play outstanding bass and he responds by informing you that if the speakers don't have at least 12" woofers then they can't be any good and thus there is no point in coming out to listen, the pressure is there to start lying to the customers, just to make the sale.

Too many "readers" want me to tell them what magic cable and speaker wire to use! They don't want me to be honest and explain that there is no correlation between cable quality and price. They certainly don't want me to inform them that the only differences between the "sound" of various cables is the way the real electrical characteristics of the cable (the resistance, capacitance, and the inductance) loads the driving source. They don't want me to say that any sonic differences can be replicated with 10¢ worth of resistors, capacitors, and inductors wired across the cable. They don't seem to even want to know that if an amplifier is not load sensitive, the characteristics of the cable won't matter at all. None of that good electrical engineering advice is any fun at all.

Magic is a lot more fun and is much easier to understand. So, I keep getting call after call and letter after letter asking me only what brand of magic cable I recommend. And, when I respond, the answer is perceived that I don't like magic cables. Wrong again! I don't like fraud! I don't like products that are represented and priced to have some mystic quality that does not exist and that the supplier knows does not exist. I don't like the fact that the entire high end and mid-fi market has taken up selling high priced cables as a way of making a quick buck and convincing you that their shinny pennies are fair trade for your quarters.

I don't like magazine reviewers mindlessly listening to and evaluating magic cables and wires in endless nauseating reviews without ever thinking about what is going on, what are they really hearing (or not hearing) and why. The concept that most electronics are excessively load sensitive and that changing the load changes the sound seems to be an alien thought, too hard to understand. The concept that if the cable changes the sound, then the real problem is the source driving the cable is never discussed. Nobody is willing to stand up and shout "Bullshit."

So, when I demonstrate at a show, obviously using standard cables and interconnects, I get to spend my time explaining why the sound was so good with "bad sounding" wires. Far too many of the visitors to our room were so brainwashed that they never understood that the sound was good because the equipment was not screwing up the source material, because I had done an adequate job of getting rid of the worse of the room acoustic problems, and because the brand and cost of the cables did not matter much.

The marketing experts have been doing far too good a job. Have some more pennies.

Frank Van Alstine

Copyright, Audio by Van Alstine, Inc., 1990. No part of AUDIO BASICS may be reprinted or reproduced in any manner without the permission of the publisher.