I've done several things that have helped me immensely in this area of audio:
1) Ask manufacturers/dealers to try a cable in which I am interested. I do this under one condition. That is, I will buy the cable from them if I am going to buy it at all. Otherwise, I'll buy it used, and won't bother the manufacturer/dealer about it.
2) Unless the music is simply unlistenable with the cable swap, I listen for AT LEAST two days with the new cable in the loop. When I go back to my original cable, it's always startling how it performs quite differently than I had remembered.
3) I've stopped paying attention to the price of the cables, in the sense of anticipating what they 'should' sound like because of their pricing. Naturally, we still have to be able to afford whatever it is that we decide to buy. But if we buy used, we can try out $200 IC's, or we can try out $1400 IC's, and not lose any money on the re-sale, should we decide they are not for us.
I believe that too many people make conclusions about cabling even before they get started with experimenting. Sure, there is plenty of cable babble and voodoo out there, but I don't even read it. I just buy various cables and try them out. Re-selling them is a snap. And while I'm certain that many people would not necessarily agree with my (and my wife's) conclusions about a particular cable's effect in our system, the differences between two cables are often huge, and easily discernible.
There is no 'have-to' in this arena. I just think that many people miss out on the potential for significant improvements in their system because they say NO even before they get started.
Just my 2 cents,
Howard
