How much money do you want to waste?

Cable companies have a right to charge whatever they want, and consumers who can afford such extravagances are free to indulge. Some who can afford it but understand why it is that cables sound different will choose to spend their money in other ways. Those who can't afford it may choose to console themselves in the same way. Unfortunately, some people who want to spend big bucks on cable feel the need to rationalize this by denying the fact that most of these products are produced for pennies on the dollar.

Bomarc you are correct and the main point is you dont need to spend big money to get big sound.
People spending big bucks on cables are free to.Just dont propogate the lie that they are worth the money and someone who does not cant possibly have a good system.

What something is worth is set by market value and what people are willing to pay. In other words, even though someone might think that a mint condition 1967 Shelby Daytona Coupe with full documentation is worth $5,000, there are collectors that would easily pay 100 times that amount for such a vehicle. Obviously, the person selling it would not deny the buyer that was willing to pay such a fee, so the value would remain at $500,000. Is the vehicle worth that amount ? Obviously it was to the buyer and his insurance company. Sean
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To further Sean above: IMO we're soul-searching to justify the prices we pay for our equips. In doing so, many of us (myself included) invariably relate the market price of a product with the cost of producing said product. Under this premise, many cables can be termed outrageously expensive: the *apparent* production cost is only remotely related to the asking price. So, how can we justify it? Now if it were a beefy amp, heavy and packed with capacitors...

Nevertheless, some people do purchase expensive cables and, in doing so, do set a market price -- as with Sean's Daytona example.
For that matter, how does the price of an expensive amp compare to the price of an automobile -- construction cost-wise? As far as I, for one, can judge-- no comparison! My amp costs more than a small car and a car seems far more complicated (and expensive) to produce than my amp. Yet, the amp is sitting in my room and playing right now (stupid me, I know).

Happy, safe, and musical holidays to all, regardless of the brand of our wires!

If I put a watch into the ground, in a thousand years it may be "priceless." I have a beer can at home that is "worth" $5K. Is it worth it to me? Yes. To my girlfriend? No, she thinks its insane.

Now, here's the interesting thing: in all technology what we are taling about is the rearrangement of matter into various forms, by bending, carving, heating, slicing, dicing, etc. And, our "machines" are only these pieces of rearranged matter rearranged together. This may seem "out there", but its actually the simplist way to cut through the abstraction that we pray to, namely, "Technology".

The second interesting thing: What these guys who decry price are really saying is that the given rearrangement that people are paying for is not justified because its not a complicated enough rearrangement. In other words, if it looked more like a complicated "machine", as opposed to a wire that doesn't move like a machine (or amp), then they would be more comfortable with the price.

Is Van Gogh's 'Night Sky' uncomplicated because it is not "technological", even though, it too, is only a rearrangement of matter?

But hold it. The objectivists who say that we should look at only a circuit tracing to determine if sound is "good" are the same guys saying that the rearrangement isn't complicated enough. In other words, if you believe that science is right and we should only look to the interactions of matter to see our truth, then why are these same guys saying that one given rearrangement of matter is "better" than another?

Rearrangement is rearrangement is rearrangement.

Scientific people who are attached to one type of rearrangement over another? Hmmm, now who is irrational?

Question: How can a mind attached to the concept that the manipulation of matter (and the observation of that interaction, er, "scientific method")will give us all truth also say that one type of rearrangement (and the manipulation that leads to it) is intrinsically better than another (in a value-laden way)?

Now, bite your lip, but here's the psychological current repressed beneath all of this: If you want to argue that we should not be using our relative wealth to buy expensive rearranged pieces of matter when people in sub-Saharan Africa do not possess enough edible matter to sustain the matter of their bodies, well, then that's another argument. An interestingly point -and symptomatically, I would say - that has not been delved into, especially by minds that like "Science" that produces "Technology" that makes wonderful matter-products, that we, in our post modern western capitalistic world, consume (consume like matter...)

Now, that should stir the pot!! (Now, did I use the word "Now" too much..?