My system was only several thousand dollars total when I bought my first Audioquest cables. I know you said interconnects but the reality is all the cables made by the same guy under the same brand share the same signature sound. Might take you a long time and a lot of listening to understand this, which I happen to have done going back to 1991, so let me save you some time.
There's also a whole Audioquest record label where if you like blues they have some great ones by Doug MacLeod, Terry Evans, Mighty Sam McLain and more. The gimmick as it were, all the wire used across the whole recording chain is AudioQuest. Listen to a few of these and after a while its pretty obvious what I said about the House Sound is true.
The AudioQuest House Sound is articulate and detailed but weak in harmonic development and tone. It emphasizes attack relative to fundamental development.
You asked about value. The well over a thousand dollar AudioQuest cables I had were easily bested by $350 worth of Synergistic Research. The SR had easily as much detail, but cleaner, with less grain and glare, and a lot more balanced fullness of fundamental tone. In terms of palpable sense of 3D depth and imaging, and dynamics both micro and macro, it wasn't even close. Took me mere minutes to decide. Then the hours and days melded into weeks fully soaking in just how much better and more sophisticated the SR cables are.
That's one story. Same has been repeated across more years and brands than I can possibly recall. If I ever once heard anything compete with Synergistic and at the same price I would let you know. In fact I would probably have bought some myself. It just never has happened.
Between new and used, active and non-active, there's so many different options out there I'd be as misleading as everyone else to just say what to buy. But if you don't at least find a few from Synergistic to audition, and then find yourself searching around trying to "system match" to fix the shortcomings and imbalances in what you got instead, don't blame me.
There's also a whole Audioquest record label where if you like blues they have some great ones by Doug MacLeod, Terry Evans, Mighty Sam McLain and more. The gimmick as it were, all the wire used across the whole recording chain is AudioQuest. Listen to a few of these and after a while its pretty obvious what I said about the House Sound is true.
The AudioQuest House Sound is articulate and detailed but weak in harmonic development and tone. It emphasizes attack relative to fundamental development.
You asked about value. The well over a thousand dollar AudioQuest cables I had were easily bested by $350 worth of Synergistic Research. The SR had easily as much detail, but cleaner, with less grain and glare, and a lot more balanced fullness of fundamental tone. In terms of palpable sense of 3D depth and imaging, and dynamics both micro and macro, it wasn't even close. Took me mere minutes to decide. Then the hours and days melded into weeks fully soaking in just how much better and more sophisticated the SR cables are.
That's one story. Same has been repeated across more years and brands than I can possibly recall. If I ever once heard anything compete with Synergistic and at the same price I would let you know. In fact I would probably have bought some myself. It just never has happened.
Between new and used, active and non-active, there's so many different options out there I'd be as misleading as everyone else to just say what to buy. But if you don't at least find a few from Synergistic to audition, and then find yourself searching around trying to "system match" to fix the shortcomings and imbalances in what you got instead, don't blame me.