Wow, $10k+ cables

Or at least use an apostrophe in c'mon.
Anyway, what is the point of the thread? Every audio enthusiast has been well aware for a long time that there are cables in and above that price range. So what? Buy them or ignore them. It's certainly not today's news.  

Wires and accessories has always been the high profit items in hifi.  That $20 roll of 12 gauge speaker wire you used to buy at radio shack was mostly all profit.   Very little on electronics.  So figure it out. 

Or at least use an apostrophe in c’mon.
Anyway, what is the point of the thread? Every audio enthusiast has been well aware for a long time that there are cables in and above that price range. So what?

I’ve always thought the point of threads like this is three-fold. First, as always, to virtue-signal. It is a way of saying, "Hey look! I’m not one of these dumb schlubs sucking snake oil!"

Second, since all experienced audiophiles understand the value of quality these posts serve to distinguish the noobs and wanna-bees from the real deal.

Third and finally, we get to point out just how valuable the wire (amp, speaker, tweak, fill in the blank) is to real bona-fide honest to God audiophiles. Ones who can, you know, hear and appreciate the difference. 

Sometimes (not often) they learn the error of their ways, make amends, drop the attitude and learn something new. I know. Don’t happen often. Not holding my breath. But you never know....

Attacking others asking questions does nothing to support the case for any particular wire expensive or otherwise. Fact is it hurts it if anything.  If one thinks a particular product is worth it just state the case.  Avoid generalizations.   The merits of one product has nothing to do with another at any price. 

The OP is on to something here....

I would use $9,999.99 cables on my "Statement" grade boxes.
More bang for your buck than the $10K offerings.

I would think the 10K+ power cords will sound fantastic in a system  that is worth $300,000 or more. 

I am afraid that would not be enough to get the very best. More like $15k.

Easier to change the capacitors and resistors than a power cable.  Plus when you change a component the sound you dialed in works in your system rather than finding another power cable that works when you change components - plus a lot cheaper!

Happy Listening

miller, Listen fat, $10k cables are not a one horse pony. They will make the hair on your legs come back up. 

I went from Pangea to Custom to AQ Blizzard Extreme and a huge difference plus well under 1K in price, even AQ NRG are decent powercords at their price point. I have a friend with a $28K AQ Dragonfly powercord in a single cable. Now if I can get rid of the very low hum these beasts have created.......

Millercarbon,  perfect!  lol

I just made a ton on GameStop. Think I will test out some Uber high end purist ic’s and pc’s. Can’t wait. I’ll let you know how they sound. 

Anybody that pays that much or even more for any kind of cable whether it's speaker interconnect power cord is a real sucker and there's one born everyday so I guess if you got lots of money you can be stupid. But I think OCC single crystal wire is the best wire on the market and it doesn't cost anywhere near that much

Jump on Purist and save big cash ASAP.

Two questions: can you really hear a positive difference in your system from it and can you afford it? If your answer to both are firm yesses, then enjoy it. If you "think you might hear something different" and your credit cars are close to being maxed, you might wanna take a step back....

ebm might be right. Best value Purist Audio cable is Neptune, $1900 retail for 1M pair RCA. You can never find used Neptune.
Anyway, that's wild capitalism, you charge as much as you can, maximize profit before other considerations. At least no one forces anyone to buy expensive cables, that's good.

I'm not a cable denier.  I've heard quite amazing differences in imaging from interconnects.  Not so much from power cords, still I can't say they don't exist.

Every time a thread like this shows up I can't help but think what type of cabling is used at CERN.  They are dealing with the nearly infinitesimally
small.  One would think only the best cables (wiring) would do.

Oh my, look at all those cables:
https://www.techspot.com/news/85717-new-super-collider-approved-cern-62-miles-long.html

When I get a "roundtuit" I'll check it out and report back.

Regards,
barts   

CERN cabling - maybe nothing special after all...except for shielding.

https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/december-2007/gallery-in-the-labyrinth

Einstein

Let me run that through my gibberish decoder ring. Sure enough- gibberish.

Sometimes (not often) they learn the error of their ways, make amends, drop the attitude and learn something new. I know. Don’t happen often. Not holding my breath. But you never know....

It’s a funny thing, I always find the posts of the people you criticize more interesting than your own. In fact, I don’t know how even you could find your REPEATEDLY telling us about your rubber bands and springs interesting.

You criticize so many people anyone would think you are unhappy here. 

You know, I got Tchernov Reference interconnects which are in essence high grade military cables. I also have Purist Neptune fluid and Wywires Platinum cables, and overall prefer them both to the Tchernov, though the Wywires and the Tchernov are close enough to each other, especially with analogue source. Best cables for NASA and military might not be best cables for music reproduction and maybe even recording. Signal transmission is a very complex thing,

when I see three posts removed following one of mine I am curious what they may have contained.  so if they were directed to me I would appreciate it you would PM me with the removed posts.  thank you.
barts

I removed the three posts as I wanted to edit them but the time to edit was past. Not about you and not sure why you would wonder if they were as your posts are benign.

I don't usually weigh in on threads talking about pricing of the high end (except for the cost of high end cartridges which are consumables though I use them). But, anyone who is already out on the cutting edge and has the wherewithal can spend limitless monies on the ancillaries (or don't consider them ancillary) to seek some small (or large) iota of improvement in what may already be a blue-sky system. Me, I'd rather put the money into records at this point-- my system is good, I use good cable, I'm not negativing those who reach for the stars, but having heard some crazy money systems over the decades, I was often left feeling I heard good hi-fi, not real music. There's an almost addictive aspect to the upgrading even within more reasonable budgets, getting gear lust (what do the guitar guys call it? Same thing, isn't it?). It's your money. Use it how you see fit. 

@jetter 
Thanks for the reply.  I as well thought they were benign.  But, there are many posts which I think are legit questions and they are met with slings and arrows.  In fact, I was simply trying to inject a little humor into this all to serious business.
Regards,
barts

inna

I can remember when you took delivery of those Tchernov cables.
Good to read about preferring Purist Audio and WyWires.
Too many cables/cords, too little time.

Happy Listening!

nasaman

Best practice- at the $10K level and above, you must visit the dealers/retailers and listen, listen, listen, to the offerings.
Have fun!

Happy Listening!

jafant, there is still one advantage that the Tchernov has over the Wywires - it has a bit more of 'the power of delivery'. And possibly another advantage - slightly more high frequency extension. But overall, yes, I find Wywires Platinum more balanced and elegant. This is in all transistor system with analog sources, I can only speak of this particular set-up.
Both Wywires and Tchernov work great in a chain with Purist Neptune, you just have to figure out which one goes where.

inna

Right On! I recall your initial writings on the Tchernov.
You are on-target regarding mix-and match cabling, one has to know placement sequence.

Happy Listening!

Other brands that I would like to try in my system are Echole and Stage III but they are so expensive even lower models and used that it is unlikely unless I get very lucky. I don't pay more than $1k for cables.
Still use original very old Purist Colossus speaker cables and plan on keeping it that way. Sure, Neptune would be better, but again - cost, and it would probably be unwise to do it before upgrading speakers. And since I would like to upgrade to Kharma speakers...not going to happen soon, unfortunately.

Yeah that price is way out of proportion in any system you do not need to spend anywhere near that to get some awesome sound a much easier way to get better sound than any wire change is to make sure your speaker and amplifier match and complement each other.

Well, I can’t comment on a $10,000 power cord or interconnect as I haven’t gone there yet (no plans in the near or distant future either). What I can tell you is you may not need to go there unless you have some "spare change" for your $800,000 system then these $10,000 cables a piece will appear normal.

The power cords in my system cost about $4,000/piece (retail) and they are worth every penny. Well, the message is you may not need to spend up to $10k to acquire great results. Half of that or lower will get the job done too.

No one seems to complain about $10k amps. What makes anyone think that designing great cable is easier and less time consuming than designing great amp ? Production cost is less, I suppose, though something like silver/gold/palladium Echole cables probably costs a lot too. 

Fools easily part with their money. Cable believer and verifier, i draw the line at about $1000. 

I am assuming that I couldn't interest you in a matched pair of "ineffable" Sukhavati 3m, spade-to-spade speaker cables, of which the manufacturer assures "each aspect of sound presents itself as simply there",  at a mere $77,000.00 USD then? 

There are far less expensive PranaWire cables. $77k is too extravagant for any cables unless they are at a completely different level.

You can go to Jay's Audio Lab (White Camaro) on YouTube and compare his recent exotic power-cord swaps to listen for differences.  Out of my league, though.

But I think OCC single crystal wire is the best wire on the market

I’m going to speculate here... This person has probably auditioned a small fraction of the cables out here, and furthermore most of us have auditioned a small fraction of them especially the really expensive ones. I would go along with "best I’ve tried" or "best I’ve found for the money" or something similar, but to declare them the "best on the market" is a bit of a stretch.. OK... a HUGE stretch. Kind of a worthless observation.

Which is no more worthless than the OP’s worthless observation. Substitute car, wine, watch, shoes, or any other expensive thing that caters to people who have a lot of money and you end up at the same place. Some people pay more for a bottle of wine and think nothing of it.. and that ends up in the toilet a few hours later. Pointing out the obvious fact that a lot of rich people spend (waste?) a lot of money on things they don’t need is the definition of a worthless observation.

Look through the archives and google around to find countless, pointless posts like this. So why do people start these threads over and over and over when you get the same responses over and over and over? Like this worthless response.

...perhaps a more worthless response is the enjoyment of 'listening to' y'all attempting to validate your choices of ic/pc cables assembled by virgins in sterile facilities using zircon tweezers at the dead of night during the dark of the moon....

Of course, the materials used would make NASA drool IF they could source such.  The next level, of course, will be supercooled ones using a refrigeration unit that will need special isolation risers to keep said cables from shattering the floor they're above, not to mention the isolation sleeves that will keep your equipment intact.... 

Oh, and don't forget the 440 VAC line needed to run the 'fridge.  You'll have to compete with the Covid vaccine suppliers for the 'fridge, too....

I can't wait to hear how 'special' all that sounds, so get on it, huh?

Margins vary but typically the actual materials + labor cost is 1/6 of retail with the retailer making the largest slice generally. Now I worked as a buyer one summer for a highly regarded brand but only got to peek behind one curtain. The cost of the super high-purity wire is rather significant and quite a bit of it sourced thru Mr. Cardas if I am not mistaken. The minimum quantities for purchase are a significant commitment financially and to reach quantity discounts even greater. Hand construction in the case of a Litz cable; a multi-layered helical topology that also involved anti-static, and anti-microphonic materials was considerably labor and skill intensive. Our terminations were also hand-made from solid high purity stock which too required considerable investment before anything was constructed. Cost of research and development is where most end users are unawares but particularly costly in the case of machine-made cable where specialized looms and tooling investments can be great. Quality control; a particular job category rapidly diminishing in America may also add costs. All in all to say you can get your monies worth in the end but boutique pricing as with many luxury products can also be highly inflated. Just a few things to think about. I like to observe Sturgeon's Law; 90% or everything is BS. You've got to do your due diligence and let the buyer beware. YMMV, Music is the best.

I have tried a number of very high end cables, including interconnects, power cords, and speaker cables.  I'm not rich by any means but if you purchase smart you can "rent" these for a while and get your money back when you sell shortly after......and they do make a difference.  On occasion they can be fabulous!  (ie High Fidelity UR and Stage III Kraken) But lets be real here....it's not like they take a Volkswagen and turn it into a Ferrari.  If you have your system fine tuned and get one of these cables you might be looking at the last 5-10% performance...and in high end audio that can be a pretty pleasing 5-10%.  That's fine if you have deep pockets but for most people that last bit just isn't worth the price of admission.  The goal for me is to get 95% of the performance of these uber cables at 30-50% of the cost....and lets be honest, nobody pays msrp for these cables.  Many $10K cables can be had at around 60-70% of msrp if you can find a "demo" cable from a dealer.  Then, if you can find a second hand cable you might be at 40% of the msrp.  For some reason these manufactures list their cable very high, thinking that everyone will call it the best because it's the most expensive.....then they deep discount so you feel good about the deal you got!!  It's their way of separating themselves from the hords.  But again, there are two ways to beat the system...….find a fabulous deal on an uber cable (it happens) or find a giant killer at an even better price (that happens too).  The only people paying anywhere near msrp are the people with deep pockets and no patience, and must have it NOW.