Silver Cable Question

I've been playing around with the idea of buying some cheap silver interconnects. There are so many companies advertising their products to be competitive with cables that are exponentially more expensive.

Some of these audio bargains are Bear Labs, Homegrown, Norh, Lat International, and a few that I can't recall at the moment.

Now, I have a query and a quagmire. For the people who have experience with any of these silver cables, do they make you feel dumb for spending hundreds more on your old yet inferior cables?

Also, I picked up some Mapleshade interconnects 6 months ago, and they would have sounded great if not for some shielding problems that cause hum in my system. How are the shielding on these cables? They don't look very well insulated.

Etane