why do people feel the need to buy expensive cable

"IMPORTANT: Use the best available speaker wires and interconnects. Audio Research cannot emphasize this enough. As better components and systems are developed, it becomes increasingly important to avoid the limitations of inferior system interconnections."

From the owner's manual for Model Reference 210, among others in their line. If your cables are performing underneath your system's capability, then you are not hearing your system. Build them or buy them--you cannot scrimp on cords and cables. Don't listen to the Home Depot, zip wire, lamp cord, power strip adherents--unless you want their mid-fi sound.

11-13-15: Calvinj
Why do others feel the need to ask why? Hmmmm? Watching another man's pockets! Oh no it's worse at Hong another man's cables!!!

There are 2 simple answers to OP question. You can ask this same question about any commodity, cars, clothing ... Either the purchase is a status symbol or superior performance.

This thread is more a reflection of the OP and members that criticize how others spend their money. They lack the resources sitting outside the fence so will criticize others to justify their own situation.

if someone posts that they have an expensive Watch collection, or Wine collection, everyone has a positive reaction. it's cool. even a sailboat or toy car.

but if someone who has worked hard to assemble the best possible audio system finds that one of the only avenues left to push a little farther down the road is with an 'uber' set of cables then it's fair game to bash them.

in their minds, it's not 'cool enough' or 'accepted' so the haters come out. in their minds they cannot accept the value equation like those other indulgent uses for discretionary cash so might as well take shots.

just the negative pack mentality going on.

Haters gonna hate! My new cables retail for $15k....gentlemen start your engines

Cables can only do so much. Finding the right pairing for your speakers can be a pain. I've just come to the realization that an old pair of cables I had lying around were perfect for my speakers.

I stated something to that effect earlier on but feel the need to expand a bit on it. My newish speakers took a while to sound right. First, they needed to break in and I was impatient. So tweak away I did with new stands, footers, going through all my old cables, and buying some new ones. I should have been patient.

Not keeping a constant in place made for some maddening results. I thought I had it all dialed in. It was only on a lark when I had some spare time that I dug out some old cables and tried one and it worked like magic.

What I'm trying to say here is that it very well may be that there's not THAT much difference in some well thought out cable design and it's your speakers that you should take a close, hard look at. The potential that lay in my new speakers was dormant until I keyed in on the right cables.

All the best,
Nonoise