Affordable cables


We all know and can't dispute that SR and other uber expensive cables can do magic with your systems however most of us aspiring audiophiles simply can't afford them. So I would like to hear from some of our colleagues who worked their way up the cable chain what if any cables priced at $100.00 or less made or make the most difference to a system. Interconnects specifically.  Thanks 
Audiomaze 
audiomaze
Zu Audio sells some of their cables on eBay. They are just fine and you may get them for (relatively) cheap. $100-200 is frequently a norm.

Then borrow someone’s expensive cables and compare to make your own opinion.

For whatever it is worth, Hosa XLR cables (about $15 per pair) and Shunyata Venom XLR cables (around $300-350, if I remember correctly) sound just the same. Shunyata looks better, though.
Thank you all for the input.sure got alot of advice. 
Merry Christmas 
Audiomaze 
millercarbon, the fact is that you have convinced yourself that all home brewed cables are failures based on one persons botched attempts. Your message to all DIYers is you are doing them a favor telling them to give up before they have started and just accept your message of ultimate failure. Every company that makes cables originally started with one person coming up with the idea and developing the project.


Well, no. Every time I tell that story its made perfectly clear this was anything but a one-off botched attempt, as you put it. The guy spent, sorry but since you missed it earlier I'm gonna shout, DECADES building COUNTLESS cables in his basement lab. This was his best, his One Cable, his Precious. The best he ever did. But his whole system was chock full of DIY cables. Only time music actually gave me a headache, his system with the DIY cables everywhere.

Oh and also, I tried a few myself. Dismal failures all. Pathetic. When I score I score, and this, wasn't even a rim shot. I have yet to hear the DIY cable no matter how great come anywhere even close to cheap pro wire.

These stories are not made up by the way. They're years in experience in the making. The exact opposite of blowing smoke, you know, like "every company originally started..." Have you met even ONE of these guys? Which one?

Wait, I got a better one: how is this even slightly controversial? Just assume, for the sake of argument, it really is possible to assemble some off the shelf parts and get truly outstanding performance. Your DIY cable, (sorry, laughing, hard to type) so secret you found it on the interweb (right?) anyone can do it, and its so awesomely better than anything else, and for cheap, and yet there's all these guys making obscene profits too dumb to figure out they can make even more building your DIY, slapping a fancy sticker with a name on it? There's a ton of em Would they not be doing this? So where are they? Oh and also at the same time the pro's would be testing and tweaking and finding trick ways to take all those same parts up a whole level, just so they can sell for even more. Leaving your regular old DIY in the dust.

Its one, or its the other. Notice nowhere in there is the scenario where the DIY really is good. Because they never are. Sorry. You got to at least pick a semi-defensible position to have any chance at all here. And this ain't it.
As for beating the SR drum, go to their classified pages here on A’gon and you will see 100’s of ads by their dealers, no need to plug their rather astronomically priced (recognizing they are not alone in their pricing) Nano quantum products.

Uh oh. What Freudian's call a slip.
In the overall scheme of things people would generally be much better off if they paid more attention to system engineering aspects of cables. Respect the directionality of wire. Elevate or suspend all cables and power cords. Clean and treat all electrical connections. If your cables aren’t cryo’d at the factory send them off to the cryo lab ASAP. If you are using vibration isolation make sure cables and power cords don’t pull on the set up as that will mess up the isolation effectiveness.