How high end must your system be...

Despite this most recent critique of your equipment, I’d ask, “Do you feel it’s important for you to hear differences in various cabling?” OR “Do you feel you already can hear the desparities between different brands/models of cabling?”

Or is it you want to begin checking out other wires now but haven’t?

I’d recommend you simply borrow or buy some and see for yourself if you havn’t done so yet. If you have and aren’t able to discern much if any changes from one set of Ics to another, but feel all is well enough, let sleeping dogs lay.

There are folks around here who can and do spend tremendous amounts of money on equipment. Yay them. Some routinely chase something they’ll never ever find, and that’s satisfaction, for they seek something that can’t be provided…. Perfection…. Or they’re satisfaction lays on some future horizon… so the actual chase is as close as they’ll ever get to being happy with things indefinitely. And their treadmills continue to roll. Yay them too.

Then too there’s just plain audio snobbery at times or ego’s unrestrained in play now and then

Wether it’s true or not should not matter as much as if you feel otherwise..

I’d not let someone else’s ideas on how my system should sound affect me negatively. Each and everyone here who get’s involved to whatever extent they do, remains sole judge and jury on the product they’ll derive from the system they amass. INO it’s about pleasing yourself.

The answer though has to be a very relative one… a system is resolving enough when upstream or downstream component exchanges elicit marked results. Noticeable effects. Clearly. No guessing involved. No maybe’s. Straight ahead “Hey! That’s ???? than it was before”

What’s something like that gonna run? I’ve no clue. There’s a bunch of variables. A bunch. Like Tvad said initially, the noise floor is a big part of it. The degree to which your individual items are resolving and capable of rendering the signal accurately. Your room. Your own hearing! Just how revealing are the loudspeakers?

I’d concentrate on putting together something that I like the sound of for me…. And be less concerned of what some other’s might think about it.

I’m not being callous or telling how to do things I’d not do myself. It’s just that there’s a whole bunch of very good equipment available to us these days and for not tons of dough, it’s not hard to create a rig which does right by music. I’d bet too your’s is pretty good already and you enjoy it frequently.

Always let your own ears decide. It’s a simple matter to find out too… simply try some other cables now and then at your liesure. Enjoy.

The first set of upscale cables I bought were here were Cardas Neutral refs. About $270 or so. Like their name indicates, they are pretty neutral. A good thing to have as a main IC when stepping up things elsewhere. I then bought one more set.

Thereafter, it was power cords.

It was when I bought a set of pretty good speaker cables though, that everything began to get squared away. I still have the SR Sig 10s running my main speakers. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s going to be a pricey affair to improve upon them, but I will at some point.

Once neutral signal cables are in place, power cords are key.

At that point, you should be able to discern readily other changes in your system… given the parameters Al pointed out.

A reference is a prerequisite in order to step up. Crazy $$$ doesn’t have to be spent all the time either in order to achieve such a situation.