Cables that cost more than good loudspeakers

Source, source, source... the MOST important piece of the puzzle.  A speaker will only do what it is told.  Now, sure there are some crappy speakers out there that have no hope no matter what you put in front of them, but the speakers are not AT ALL the most important piece of the puzzle.  I have seen/heard so many setup lately that had a ton of $$$ in the front of a very modestly priced loudspeaker and sound superb.

As far as speaker cables... the Clear Day stuff is AMAZING at the price he is asking for it.  My $150 Clear Day solid-core silver (single run) replaced a pair of Audioquest Gibralter ($1,650 - I paid less than $400 used) and the difference was not subtle.  Seeing people drop $5,000 or more on speaker cables (even if they have millions of dollars) makes me sad.

@audiofreak32 , great avatar! You are certainly entitled to your opinion, however, your enthusiasm does not make your correct.
Yes, there is a source first camp, there is also a speaker first camp, there is even an amp first camp, and a cable first camp. All are enthusiastic about their opinions, all believe that they are correct.

Personally, I believe in balance, and there are many in that camp too. A "chain is only as strong as it's weakest link" philosophy.

No one is right, no one is wrong. That is why they make so many different flavors! :)

BTW, 8 years later, the OP's shocking cable pricing looks pretty pedestrian to me now. ;^)

I've recently given in to the expensive speaker cable camp after using budget cables for years, even on 5 figure speakers.

Once I got a taste of "The other side" I could no longer ignore what I was hearing despite hating the thought of the price I was about to pay for a piece of wire. It literally angered me to the core!

But, with that said it amazed me that the higher and higher I went up the speaker cable food chain the better and better the system sounded.

My thoughts are that if you can add a piece of wire between your amp and speaker at $1 a foot and then continue swapping cables until you can no longer sense a difference then you can safely say you've reached the limit of your current equipment. Then and only then should you take notice to the cost of the cable at which point you have your answer on how much you need to spend in order to get every nickel of value out of your current equipment investment.

It seems pretty clear to me that a great deal of musical info is lost between point A (amp) and point B (speaker) given how much of an increase in SQ a cable can provide as you move up the chain.

One final point, the only way I have found to "cheat" all the above is to design your system around the use of Mono Blocks which allow you to place your Amps and Speakers in VERY close proximity to each other (we're talking 2ft or less of wire here). In that scenario you can then leverage the same approach equipment designers do with wire inside the chassis of a piece of equipment which is 9/10 times Bogg standard wire.