Cable Costs Relative to System

Metaphysics,
Holy cow,yes you have come to your senses. My system is in the 75k range and I have spent less than 1k on cables. Cables important properties include inductance resistance and in some cases capacitance. Interconnects require shielding. Buy very pure,large gauge low inductance cables with good connecters and you are done. If retail is more than 2k-3k (used sub 50%) you are being robbed. It can be done for less than 1k. Most "high end" cable companies buy their cables from manufacturers and retail them @ 2000% profit.Any component you buy is typicaly retailed @ 5 times cost of manufacture. The reason some of thse cables make your system "sound better" despite not being low inductance,low resistance is that they actually roll off frequeny extremes making so so systems that are not flat at these frequencies more "musical". Take the money and buy better speakers or better source or room improvements.
Jim

Metaphysics started this chat in 2001 and hasn't posted in 4 years. Wow, this is the longest thread i've ever seen.

Anyway, after I had great speakers ($7k silverlines) and tube amps ($6k of Cary tubes) and sources ($5k turntable, $5k CD player), then speaker and interconnects made a big difference.

I made my own cables and used for many years. Replacing my $60 home made thick gauge cables with Kimber Monocles made a massive difference. The system "breathes" now... it has much more dynamic range.

I've done much A/B testing of cheapo interconnects and Kimber silver interconnects (over $1k each retail). There is a major noticeable difference in imagining, 3D layering, frequency rolloff, etc. The silver interconnects worked far better on my tube system than copper interconnects. But, I suspect impedance matching is a factor here.

In my $29K system, $4k are cables. In my experience, the impact of cables is (in order of importance):
1. speaker cables
2. interconnects between source and preamp
3. interconnects between preamp and amp
4. power cables (minor diff)
5. digital cables (no noticeable diff so far)

DJ

Wow...everybody has alot to say! Problem is most of it don't mean jack. Experiment, experiment and then experiment some more..start cheap and only go as high as necessary. Do not read reviews. People with credentials are the worst...mostly spec driven despite having the ultimate cable testers on either side of their heads! I gave up the ultra high-end because of just such mental angst. The music should be first...even if it's being played on a table top radio...all else is obsession mostly!

Indeed - I have a £20K system in which I spent less than 5% on cables - all custom made. I compared with cables cost 100 times 25 times as much and there was no advantage

Check out Arthur Salvatore's site, high-endaudio.com. He's a subjectivist who only believes in what he hears, yet he has a whole section called "The Cable Scam"