BEST INTERCONNECT FOR $25 EACH?

Years ago I purchased cables from Innersound $50 per meter pair.  If you can find some used I'd go for it.

The manufacturer explained that all that is needed for them to sound good is a have good wire (he used Belden) and a solid connection to the plug.

Innersound was a high end electrostatic speaker manufacturer.

You can probably get pretty good cables if you check your local vendors and find someone who will build them for you.

Why use unshielded cables? You're going to have all those IC's next to power cords (which may or my not be shielded), transformers, and the AC lines into the receptacles. Possible RFI and EMI.

@tls49 

The shield should be connected to the component with the most robust ground, which is often the amplifier. Some phono/pre are even battery powered, whereas amps are not. Hence the suggestion.

terry9The shield should be connected to the component with the most robust ground, which is often the amplifier.

I'm not sure what you mean by "robust ground." A good ground has low resistance and low impedance and - unless there's something amiss with your electrical wiring - that's easy to achieve. You want to avoid ground loops in an audio system, and the best way to do that is to have all components grounded at a single point. That usually means using the preamp (or integrated amp) as the ground for all components in the system. The goal is to keep all grounds at the same potential.

Taww, teflon is bad stuff to get hot because it decomposes into seriously bad compounds starting about 470F. Think HF (hydrogen fluoride), the stuff used to etch glass. Some modern non-stick uses a high temperature variant, or so I understand.

But I may have been wrong about Canare and teflon - I don't remember how I came to that conclusion back in the dark ages.

As for my components deserving better, I am still spending on things which yield unambiguous improvements, like vacuum capacitors, or things to protect equipment, like isolation transformers and Variacs for soft-starting the power supplies. Until I have finished there, I just don't have money to spare for things that don't demonstrate conclusively in my system, and for which I see no theoretical advantage. YMMV

Thanks for the corrective note about Canare and teflon.