Dear Doubt Everything,
Being that your message seems like much more like snide remarks rather than actual curiosity, and a brief search of your messages at AC, with a couple exceptions, turn up nothing but similar remarks regarding cryogenics, interconnects, speaker cables, burnin, and AC power, and any product not made by AVA or Legacy or the cheapest cable you can find, I would suggest a few things below.
How does a piece of wire improve an amplifier design, ckt.? Can you explain "single crystal" related to a wire? What equipment do you use for materials analysis?
1. Go to
www.empiricalaudio.com -- you know, the products you are questioning. Or is it really curiosity? Steve has a rediculous amount of information on his site, in the Technical Papers section, in the FAQ, in the Product pages, in the About Us section. As they say, RTFM. Would be an awful shame to think that someone took the time to put together such resources and they're not being read.
If that doesn't work, do a quick search on the web, you'll find about 1000 references to 'single crystal' processes, wire, draws, and everything you could possibly want. Yes, you'll find audio references, but 95% of the information you'll find regarding the benefits are to other transfer applications from journals of engineering primarily. Sounds like what you actually want anyway.
If that's not enough, please leave me a PM and I'll be happy to send you a few dozen links from journals, audio manufacturers, as well as many companies where you can purchase 'single crystal' wire of many materials.
If that's not enough either, regardless of source, I'm sure you could try Steve's 30 day money back guarantee. As you seem to doubt everything, but not AVA, I'm sure you've read all the Audio Basics newsletters, where AVA actually switched to high price cables because he did notice a difference. Whether it is considered a value or not depends on your personal life and not the product. Some people buy things regardless of 'value' because it provides them some form of benefit. This would be similar to someone thinking you were crazy for getting your amplifier upgraded, when the original one plays music already and it would be 'of value' to change anything, despite the difference, no matter how small or large.
Look at the stuff they where listening to. If they had any musical sense, it would make the review legit.
You are so right, the effect of changing something in the audio chain can only be evaluated using particular types of music. Particular types of music are immune to tweaking, circuit design, wire type, and choice of audio components. What?!
How do you come up with the names of some of this stuff?
I don't work for Empirical Audio, but I'd assume you choose something that sounds interesting or somewhat describes what your product does or provides. Its called marketing. Usually done for the same reason that different companies have different names -- would make things awfully confusing if every organization was called "Company" and every product called "Product."