Have you ever thought it would be cool to have a stereo reviewer come to your house?

jalian, the simple way to determine whether I am correct or not is to read my book. There you will see the back ground, the system building, that I did in order to reach my conclusions. 

Respectfully, you may think you are selecting cables thoughtfully, and that can be done by being guided by opinion and advertising. However, without using a set of cables, you have no idea what the intended sound is, what the cables are supposed to so. Mixing cables is precisely a guess, not a directed activity toward knowingly making the system sound as you wish. 

I do not expect hobbyists who have not worked with sets of cables to agree. It is difficult for many to conceive of the benefit of such activities apart from having the experience themselves. As a person who has done the system building, the comparisons, I am not suggesting, I am telling you what works and what does not work to purposefully advance an audio system. Mixing cables does not direct a system to better sound because you have no baseline for what the cable is supposed to do.

In my book I discuss that cables are the most disdained component of a system, for audiophiles, reviewers, manufacturers, etc. routinely disregard the intent of the manufacturer to use them in sets. In arrogance, these people presume they know better, how a cable will perform aside from ever hearing it as the manufacturer intended. Thus, they have no idea what the cable is supposed to do.

I have more to say about this in the book, including other reasons why it is important to use sets of cables in comparison.  

I have strong opinions about many aspects of system building, including break in, isolation products and other tweaks, ABX testing, etc. I have no problem with a person holding a contrary opinion, but my principles are formed by actual system building, which yields quite different results than the received wisdom of the community. Audiophiles who go by the common methods and received wisdom of the industry and community typically build worse sounding systems. They could have much better sound, but their methods inhibit system advancement. 

Says the dude with not one single review of his book on Amazon,

And then to win friends and influence people, essentially refers to us as a misguided herd.

@douglas_schroeder Note to your publisher (and many other similar entities). It’s 2026. The majority of consumers access online content from a mobile device. 

Dagogo.com is unusable mostly due to the majority of the real estate being given to advertisers.

@douglas_schroeder has always held himself in high esteem. Although he is usually polite, it’s always easy to read between the lines and understand that he is dressing you down.

but my principles are formed by actual system building, which yields quite different results than the received wisdom of the community. Audiophiles who go by the common methods and received wisdom of the industry and community typically build worse sounding systems. They could have much better sound, but their methods inhibit system advancement. 

I'm good with anybody coming to my house as long as I like them. I wouldn't hold being a stereo reviewer against them if I did. 

When one(Doug) has access to multiple cable looms and components a certain advantage exists regarding system building/synergy. Curiosity and finances can detour an Audiophile since many buy 1 component at a time leaving the system mismatched thus having a placeholder intact. My best advice is don't make system building/synergy more difficult then needed keep interconnects and speaker cables from the same company along with the amp/preamplifier. The curiosity of mixing cables/components will probably end up being a waste of time/money.