How much money do you want to waste?

I have been using the high end Monster cables , & kimbers and they do make a suttle improvement. More noticable with higher end gear. My friend bought a $ 40,000 used Krell system The Seller was a real knowledgable guy and he was using the $ 800.00 Monster 2.4 s with his $ 20,000 speakers and they sounded great ! Good cables do sound better with quieter backgrounds and a cleaner better detailed presentation , and they look cool too.

Sugarbrie, you have actually given comfort to the enemy here. Consumer marketing is all about convincing people that they will feel better about themselves of they buy the right products. The more desirable the car, the more desirable the man. Fashionable clothes, good looking popular guy. Craig K and the wire is wire crowd are saying the same about cables, that people are wasting money on cable in order to feel good about themselves, to feel they are among the cognoscenti, to feel that they are one step ahead of the next guy in getting good sound.

Of course, some of the wire is wire crowd believe that cheap cable is just the same as the expensive stuff because it supports their self image of being smarter than the average audiophile.

I am an agnostic. I hear differences in cables but (1) will never spend a lot knowing that my room and the furniture in it make more of a difference than any cable could, and (2) I may be delusional - the differences I hear may not be real at all.

"Natalie," here are 2 quotes from your post above:

"$ spent have nothing to do with sound Quality, Period"

vs.

"My system retails for 25K so it does have the resolution to distingish"

Think about it

My most expensive cable in my main system is the preamp to power amp link (Nordost Quattro Fil). In that position it affects and greatly improves the sound of every component running through my system. Now divide the cost of that cable among all my components in front of it: CD, Phono, Tape, Tuner, Preamp. I did buy it used for $800. So that is $160 per component. I could not have spent $160 more (each) for a better CD, Tuner, etc, etc and gotten such a large improvement. From this perspective it was an incredible bargain. The same would be true if I had paid the $1600 list price ($320 per component).

You can't tell a blind person about the color purple; he/she lacks a point of reference. And, as all good objectivists know, our thought processes are dualistically-based and require a point of reference to have any validity, logically speaking. The best analogy I can think of is to imagine yourself in a plane flying at a certain altitude. You look down and the coast line appears as a jagged line. Then you go higher and the coast appears more smooth. Its still the same coastline, but you are seeing it from different symmetries of perspective. The person traveling higher has seen both views, but any person traveling below, and always staying there, their assumptions about reality bounding them to that altitude, don't believe that a higher, more inclusive and expansive worldview exists. They are conformist to those assumptions ("...from what I've been told.")and that box of assumptions is a comfortable place for them to live without the introspective trauma of examining their world independant of others' formulations ("they be dragons over the horizon..."). Applying this to the issue at hand, we can say that some people hear at a particular symmetry and others at deeper symmetries. Those listening minds attached to the shallower perspective MUST deny the deeper levels as if they don't exist because, otherwise, their assumptions (always in these discussions, scientific materialist biases)would have to be reflected upon. This is why, psychologically, such assertions from such people are so dogmatic and rigid. You can not have a reasoned dialogue with them because, in doing so, you threaten their world. Or rather, what they desperately want the world to be. This was the case when the mediaval world view that resisted the Cartesian, and it is now happening as the Cartesian resists the next paradigm. Its evolution. Its just that in high end audio, because it concentrates opposing worldviews in the experience that neither can escape from (music listening), we see the butting of heads easier, and more often.

Of course, that doesn't mean that to ME - maybe not to a Czar - that a particular piece of technology is not "over-priced", but again, that is a different discussion as to whether differing perceptive symmetries exist (I own a NBS IC and still think its over-priced, even relatively speaking, but the subjective listener in me loves the altitudes).

Paulwp: I don't think I am giving comfort to the enemy. I assumed Craig does not shop at KMart for all his clothes, so using his logic (not mine) he is wasting his money. I did not buy my system to show off to the neighbors. I do not own an expensive car and probably never will. It does not matter to me. I get no buzz out of driving. But if someone gets a lot of enjoyment out of an expensive Hi-Tech sports car, then they have spent their money fine by me. Go for it!!