I became obsessed with resolving the cable puzzle after observing the differences two cables made in my system. Two products made by Monster cable at the time (1982) one was a clear jacketed parallel twin, the other was a twisted pair (called Hot Wires) of about the same size, the twisted pair sounded profoundly better. This initial observation sent me on a quest that lasted several years. In 1984 I had several prototypes that were definitely state of the art at the time and I had made some observations on conductor scaling and configuration that were worthy of patents. I decided to go into business the following year.

I have been in the business since 1985. I became interested in cable design in the early 1980's while working as a transmission line design engineer for General Telephone of California (now Verison). I have been involved in the industry as a hobbyist since the seventies. I began researching cable in the early 80's Initially my involvement was just as a cable manufacturer but I soon realized that servicing the whole market was beyond the scope of what I cared to do. I decided in the late eighties to share my patents and technology with other manufacturers. I decided to keep only the most complex types of cable embodiments for myself (layered litz construction) and assist the other manufacturers in securing the balance of the market. By the mid 90's the OEM portion of my business was by far the larger. At this time recording music, room design and Product development are my main involvements.

I began working out of my garage in 1985 while still at the phone company. It was a difficult time because the business grew very rapidly and finances were short, after two years, I had 5 employees and moved into a proper facility. I took an early retirement from the Phone company and spent the money on equipment and a new shop. By the early 90's I had 12 employees and had out grown my facilities. In 1992 I moved the operation to our new location in Oregon.

By the mid 1990's our product line had expanded to include connector manufacturing and a wire stranding operations. We now have manufacturing operations in several locations and supply much of the stranding /copper and silver products used in the high-end market. I have patents that I share with other manufacturers in the industry and I have limited my direct involvement in the cable market to layered litz construction.

I have very little knowledge of the cable industry in general, it is all I can do to keep track of my own business and tend to the manufacturers I deal with directly.

I do not know how other manufactures determine their pricing - for the most part my prices are determined by cost of labor, materials and equipment. I mark up about 40% to the distributor who in turn marks up about 40% after shipping an advertising expenses, the dealer in turn marks up about the same or a little more. Our employees are paid a good wage and have medical and retirement benefits, many have been with us since 1985. Cardas audio returns a substantial portion of the price of every cable to further the musical forum by helping build performance halls and support the efforts of musicians in the area The original impetus for the business was "helping musicians reproduce there music" .

The cable manufacturing business is a good an honorable one in some quarters and although there are many pretenders and "want to be's" they find very little success in the long run because they are so easy to identify and the real guys are so obvious. Cloaking house wiring in a fancy jacket for a big ticket has not been a successful ploy in the long run. The foundation of this business is "word of mouth" in the long run our growth and survival depends on it, the internet has seen to that.

I manufacture ultra pure copper stranding in a specific size progression (Golden Ratio by cross section), this stranding is used by several major manufactures, the production of this stranding and the size of these manufactures has double approximately every 5 years for the last 20 years. I have no reason to believe that the growth rate will change in the near future. I strongly suspect the advent of the DVD as a medium for high sample audio will accelerate the market, the changes that cable make are all the more evident in a musically resolved system if it were not for vinyl I never would have made the observations that I did.