Are audiophiles still out of their minds?

Audiophiles ,,..There were no marketing genius at work here .

Two people above wrote about belden and Western Electric cable. I have removed some Sablon Pantella adn Crystal cable interconnects and replaced with a Beldin and Western electric interconnect. Replaced a High Diamond 8 speaker cable with a 14 Gauge Western electric speaker cable. My system has never sounded better. Replaced $3200 worth of cables with $250 worth of cables for real improvements in sound
Alan

BJC for me , don't think I would be able to hear a difference in cables anyway 
id rather spend some $ on music and find the better sounding LPs or CDs   I can hear the difference in  music source 
but that's my take on it.  
  Spend your money on what pleases you 

hello ,
whenever some audiophiles or reviewer suggest spending about 15-20% of the cost on cables base on your total audio system cost. Do they mean per cable or the total cabling cost in the system? if a hifi system cost $10k, do i spend about $2000 on all cables combine? or per piece of cable about $2000?
any answer? pardon please if it sounded dumb question! Thanks!

Philipwu, not a dumb question at all. What is dumb is the person who came up with the idea that 15-20% of your system should be spent on cables.  It was probably cable manufacturers who brain washed gullible audiophiles to spend that much on cables. I've been in this hobby for 30 years, and you hear all kinds of BS based on no credible evidence. Like some have said, you can replace $2000 worth of cables with another for $250 and get better results because of system synergy.

Unfortunately, there are audiofools who will not consider a component worthy unless it costs above a certain price point. So to accommodate these fools, manufactures will purposely make components expensive by adding bling to the chassis but doing nothing to the all important circuitry.  A friend, who is a manufacturer of audio gear, once told me you won't get press or attention unless you make the chassis huge and substantial and charge a hefty sum. It is not unusual for some high end gear with 30-40% of its cost just in the chassis work.  So that $50k amp you're drooling over is largely made up of bling that doesn't improve the sound. Clever marketing will claim the substantial chassis is for resonance control,

I know of another famous audio designer who came up with a very efficient component with small footprint, but his customers complained it wasn't big enough. So he just put the same circuit in a bigger macho looking chassis which drove up the cost.  We audiophiles often shoot ourselves in the foot with our own stupidity.