Stories like this tend to focus the mind:

…it looks like a group of 12 self-professed “audiophiles” recently couldn’t tell the difference between Monster 1000 speaker cables and plain old coat hangers. Yeah, coat hangers. The group was A-Bing different cables, and unbeknownst to them, the engineer running the test swapped out a set of cables for coat hangers with soldered-on speaker connections. Not a single one was then able to tell the difference between the Monster Cable and the hangers, and all agreed that the hangers sounded excellent.

They make me come to terms with the degree to which spending cash on these beauties (which I’ve been strongly considering) is a question of fashion above all else. Even though they surely sound better than the pair of computer speakers I currently have attached to an Apple Airport Express, will they sound twice as good as the mid-range Polks I could pick up at Best Buy for half the cost?

The predictable endpoint of such argument is, of course, that my crappy computer speakers are doing a more than adequate job for my current needs. I suppose I’ll wait to see if Bush’s stimulus package reignites the consumerist flame within me.