Cable Costs Relative to System

It is so easy to hear what a great cable or power cord can do for fine equipment. True, they are not always super expensive, but some of the higher priced stuff does deliver the goods on great gear..night and day differences!! Some people are tone deaf..that's a fact as well! I have owned just about all the major cable brands, including Radio Shack...all wires are not created equall sorry to say! MIT is my favorite of the higher price stuff...it allows the full dynamic range thru with both macro and micro dynamic shadings..tone color is vivid and soundstaging is deep and layered with oodles of air!! Horns are one of the toughest instruments to re-create on a stereo...try the RS cable against a MIT Magnum cable and ya don't have to scratch your head...your jaw will drop!! This all means nothing of course unless you own great gear like Krell ect....! One must also have a deep love of live music in order to understand what makes one cable sound better than another...if no appreciation exists then any cable will do, which is fine if that makes you happy! It's a personal thing..you don't have to make it a public scourge!!

that component which makes the greatest (positive) difference to the sound of a stereo system is worth the most dollar investment.

aside from the speaker, there is no formula for allocating funds to the other components which makes sense. if one's budget is sufficiently large the task of configuring components is easier than when funds are limited.

unfortunately it is not possible to assemble all combinations of components, so there is an element of luck and the opportunity to listen.

i see no advantage in developing a formula to allocate expenditures on individual components.

In blind test I would bet anything you could not pic Radio shack spoole wire form the The crazy 1K plus cables. Any money. Snake oil is snake oil. I dont need to brag on spending 5k on wire. To many on this site do.

Now, that's quite a generalization! It would do you good to find out which cheap products deliver and which ones do not. In my system I use 65 cents/foot military surplus signal transmission cable as speaker wire yet handcrafted, naturally insulated silver interconnects.

My system is resolving enough that anyone can tell apart same models of a power cable treated at different cryogenic facilities. My system is gentle enough that it can successfully play any recording of any musical genre regardless of recording quality.

With psychic power and primal intensity,

I'll throw-in my 2 cents worth (maybe it's already been said, I didn't read all 135 responses up to this point!). Power cords can make or break a system IMHO. Some cords that come with your components are fine as is (i.e.: Audio Note Japan pre-amps, their KSL-SPz AC cord is fine, no need to upgrade). Most gear a great AC cord will have a very positive effect and you don't need to spend huge amounts of $$$ to get a great power cord. Example: Z-Cables made (I say made because as of several weeks ago Z-Cables closed shop do to personal health issues... and YES, Mark is doing well now) a $600 Black & Red Lighting AC cord that actually beat out most mega buck cords or at least performed as well. I've listened to dozens of power cords, they all make differences (again as a qualifier, your system has to be capable to hear all these, sometimes subtle changes, but in the end it's trial and error. You have to experiment or trust your dealer.

a cable(power/speaker/inter connector) is only worth what it will bring in the after market. example if a cable lists for $1000.00 and you can get a 25% disc costing you $750.00. then when you go to sell on audiogon and you can get $550.00-$750.00 back the cable was worth the price. if you payed $900.00 for the same cable and had to sell it for $450.00 or less, not a value in my mind. and the lower you most go the lower the ultimate value. so its not the price but the % of your original investment you can recover that determines the real $ value. so if you buy $8500.00 list spraker cables for $5700.00 and a few yrs of enjoyment or dislike later, and you can recover 80 to 100% of your money paid, well you did ok. obviously the closer to the 100% the beter. thats the way i see it anyway. you should research resale value first, then consider buying.