why do people feel the need to buy expensive cable

After 17 years as an audiophile, the key is honestly to try lots of different types of cable at different price points, because the results are so system dependent. In my pretty respectable system with a Levinson amp and preamp, Revel Studios, PS audio PWD, the best sounding interconnects and speaker cables came from Patrick Cullen at Cullen Cable, and thats after trying several $1k+ speaker cables and interconnects. In previous systems over the years, I compared boutique budget cables of those days to high end stuff and the high end stuff won, so you just have to be open minded and trust your ears.

Jimmywho gets it. 🏆

Mmm,seems like the community is coming to an agreement here.

Garebare,

I know the mark ups on cables is crazy! But even the mark up on speakers is very high. I was having a discussion with a friend of mine on what it cost to build certain speakers. (Not to pick on a certain manufacturer) but we were discussing Wilson audio. He figures it cost 20 percent of retail to build a speaker. So for an example. If the Alexia retails for 52k than their cost should be around 10k. I would say that is a very big markup from manufacturing to retail.

Mapman, actually he didn't try any expensive cables. I trust no one here actually thinks that $1K+ speaker cables are expensive. Hint: they're not. That's kind of entry level at this stage of the game. Now, if he said he tried $10K speaker cables and preferred the ones he's got then maybe we'd have something to talk about.