The money issue is a little bit of a red herring. I’ve been to people’s homes with expensive gear in place, but very poor set-up, and no thought to maximizing what the person has--I’m not talking about expensive tweaks, but basic stuff, like layout, AC power, turntable set-up and isolation, room treatment, etc. I’m sure all of you have had the experience of hearing a system that doesn’t purport to be state of the art that sounds great, because care was taken in the selection and set up of the components as a system in a given room.
For someone at home, striving to get the best sound obtainable-- that last 5% is often challenging and as I think Mike Lavigne said here somewhere, often makes the biggest difference once everything else is dialed in. Cables can be part of the equation- not necessarily the most expensive, but the ones that make the system shine with the fewest negatives. I’m not an absolutist about any of this- if you think old WE cable, or some very basic, inexpensive product sounds good in your system, go for it.
This hobby started as DIY and I respect the people who are willing to do the work on that level too, rather than just buying the latest sonic bauble. In the long run, I’d bet some of us have spent more money on switching gear, "upgrading," changing components and buying modestly priced "tweaks" over the years that are now in the graveyard of forgotten audio than the cost of some fancy cable. Anybody doing this hobby for any length of time realizes that they are really doing it for themselves- few family members or outsiders are going to care much one way or the other. I appreciate the lure of "OMG, this cable will change your life," but hopefully, most of us have been around long enough to realize that you have to make evaluations based on listening in your system, hopefully over enough time to hear not only the "positives" of any change, but the negatives as well.
Remember how, in the old Absolute Sound days when Harry P. was in top form, and he would write about a component that had no sonic signature, was absolutely revealing, and gave him a entirely new perspective on the rest of the gear? And some issues later, that same piece of gear was revealed to be flawed in some way? (Not faulting HP, it was the nature of his adventure, in those days, and was quite fun to read about). But, that elusive chase for the ideal? The pinnacle? At some point --at least for me--it is a tail chasing exercise and consumes more money, time and effort than the results. I think if you buy good gear, it can give pleasure for a long time. That might include cables that, after evaluation, seem to "gel" with your particular combination of components and your ears. At that point, it can be money well spent if it enables you to use the system for its intrinsic purpose, rather than listening solely to figure out what needs to be improved. Not an easy place to get to-- but we all have that point of diminishing returns where expectations, money, research, time and effort lead us (or ought to lead us) to a place where we say "hey, this sounds really great- I know where the weaknesses are, and I’m happy with the cost/benefit I’ve struck to get there." That point is obviously a very individual choice, and depends as much on the obsessive nature of the enthusiast as it does on their finances. I would assume, perhaps wrongly, that some reason and judgement goes into drawing those lines for each of us.
