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John E. Johnson, Jr. has posted a review and bench measurements of the Marc Audio Red Line interconnects ($440) and speaker cables ($319) at Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity. His conclusions:
So, I listened to a couple of tracks on several SACDs with my reference cables and then replaced them (connections between the SACD player and the preamplifier, and preamplifier to power amplifiers) with the Marc Audio Red Line cables and listened to the same tracks. To my surprise, I heard no difference at all. Now, our readers who feel that cables make no difference will say, "Of course you didn't hear any difference, because cables are all the same." That's fine. In the cable arena, I am a centrist. I do think they make a difference, but I don't think you have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get good cables, and that most likely, the connector makes at least as much difference as the cable itself. The RCA plugs on the Red Line interconnects are gold-plated copper alloy. Specifically, the plugs are WBT-0147's, which work well with small diameter conductors such as is the case with the Red Line interconnects…
I tested the speaker cables using the same setup as I did originally with the Red Line interconnects. I compared them to one of my reference cables (Cable "X") which is a 15 foot pair (the MSRP for a 2.5 meter pair is $8,500).
Again, as with the interconnects, I could hear no difference between the Marc Audio and Cable "X". Now, I do have to say that I can hear a difference when I use garden variety lamp cord as speaker cables. The highs tend to roll off. In fact, that is how I got into starting Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity. I had been using 12 gauge lamp cord for speaker cables, and I swapped in some inexpensive, but well engineered, audio cable. All of a sudden, the high frequencies were there. I hadn't known they were missing until I put in those nice audio cables.
You can read the full review here.
