Cables that make no sense...

Any cable which costs more (or equivalent to) the cost of the main components. I have seen postings with people asking for details on cables which cost as much as their amps or speakers. Whilst cables do make a big difference I think that they should take a smaller share of the money, say no more than 10% of the entire system cost. This is just my opinion and I'd welcome any feedback from anyone who thinks I have got this balance seriously wrong.

Personally I make all of my own ICs. It's not difficult, and in my experience it has given substantially better sound, at substantial savings compared to going with the cable manufacturers. I haven't yet used this route for speaker cables, but I'm very tempted.

Then I must be a fool or deaf.
I am doing this little cable shoot-out here, as you all know and why is it, that I hear huge differences in sound.
And I do not say, that all expensive cables sound better than the cheap stuff.
But certainly there are differences in sound and yes, a few of the expensive cables have indeed performed better than their cheaper counterparts.
I really believe that people, who state that you can go to Radio Shack and get cables there, probably have never heard quality cables and do not have a system with enough resolution. If you have such a systen, then every cable will just sound the same. It is like trying to look at electrons with an ordinary microscope . You will see nothing and claim that electrons do not exist.
But wait, the guy with a raster-electronic microscope, he will see electrons. So who is right then? The guy with the better mikroscope of course. In order to take advantage of the resolution of some high-end cables, you will need a high end system. It is so obvious to see, that I can't understand how some people miss this line of reasoning.

Perhaps you misunderstood me. I would never state that cables do not make a difference when I have clearly heard that they make a major difference.

However I have found that their difference only justifies about 10% of the system cost being spent on cables. So if you have a 100k system then spend 10k on cables (I have no experience at this stratospheric price point), but if you have a $3k system (like mine) then spend about $300 on cables. Putting a $1k cable in a $3k system will not make a $1k difference, but putting a $100 cable in a $3k system could well make a $100 difference.

See what I'm saying ? What I really wanted to know was whether people think my 10% figure is about right, or too high or too low.

Sean...sounds about right, but it's not a musically relevant rule. Sort of like saying socks should only cost about 10% of the shoes you're wearing...or 1% of your best suit. Who cares? The cable market is wildly non-linear and non-correlated with performance, so yeah it's helpful to cite a guideline to keep us from totally irrational lopsidedness, but I can imagine a scenario where a detailed, linear, resolving affordable 2 way monitor that's relatively cheap, used with a low-powered affordable amp and a good source benefiting from one of the better ICs that itself might cost as much as one of the components.
OTOH you could make your own excellent IC for $50 and it'd sound great on $15k speakers, and the 10% rule would similarly be only cognitive dissonance.
Pick your transducers, then power them, then voice em with cables. Sorry to be so pedantic. Good night.

Although cables vary in sound based on manufacturer I think the benefit is basically more about allowing your equipment to perform at its best then adding anything themselves. A four thousand dollar set of speaker cables will do nothing for the cheaper systems but it will make an over the top system shine by allowing you to hear more of the equipment.

I recently added a high end digital cable to my system and it didnt do anything for my DVD player but the same cable put on my transport made a huge difference. The DVD player was already topped out but it allowed the transport to show me more of what it had.

Cables are probably the most marked up product there is in high end audio but I also beleive they are one of the biggest bangs for the buck. Yes you can over do it to the point where it makes no difference but matching the quality and signature sound of cables is as important as matching a dac to a transport.