Who thinks $5K speaker cable really better than generic 14AWG cable?

All the latest posts are great and start to turn this into a thread again worth reading. Thanks to aberyclark, ptss, grannyring and others for posts over the last couple of days.  I am one of those that has heard good overall in some level of more expensive cables both with 'more expensive audiophile as well as more reasonable cost gear, BUT if you see some other posts from me, you'll know I've also reached a certain point of house sound being overwhelming, cost coming into doubt, etc...where I've ripped them all out, taken the loss, realized I made some costly mistakes, etc... and went back to stock cords to try again making various levels of expenditure, but not the highest available in a line, on the market, etc...thereafter.  I also knew a dealer/friend of mine who invited to his house one day to listen to his personal system and while in his kitchen he took out an AIWA or some other 'boom box' he'd bought and had it playing a CD with it's default (luckily detachable 15-amp) cord after which point he attached a 10-foot long monstrous home-made 10ga (with Analysis Plus $30+/per foot in-wall wire) and terminated with the latest Furutech high-end 15-amp connectors so about a DIY $3500 retail PC on a $200 boom-box...) and later some massive Tara Omega power cord that was even more expensive if memory serves. I'd never make this level (10x cost or more) "wire to component" expenditure but I'll be damned if I did not hear one hell of a difference and that $200 boom-box wasn't MUCH better sounding and almost bearable...

I also happen to think there is a level of reasonable pricing even among SOTA cords and that many cable and component vendors violate even that; for example, IMHO, nothing can justify the price of some of these ICs, speaker cables, grounding solutions (in particular), etc...in the 5 and 6-figure (or very high 4 figure, all in USD$) camp.  Had one guy telling me about a system that had over $200K USD in grounding boxes and cables more than once; I just don't get that at all even though I do favor buying higher-end cables (not necessarily highest price) to a point. In short, I agree there is snake-oil and extreme markup/greed out there in some aspects of the cable industry though not all; there ARE guys out there practicing real audio/aural science and building legit products that sound better at price points that offset their total cost of development, price of innovation, materials cost to experiment/refine, etc... but there's a limit to this as well.    Fact is though, I've heard enough of a difference in my system between cheap/stock cords, ICs and spool-wire on speakers (have tried them all) and something better at many levels that I will forever spend some level of money on 'better' cables.

On a different but somewhat ironic level, I'd also expect to see earlier on this thread some justification that a basic box car like Yugo or something else is what everyone should drive as there is no difference in function between that Yugo and a higher performance/more comfortable cars of any brand....surprising that we did not!!!

Have a great weekend all!

Can't resist one more! Stereophile; Fremmer reviews Boulder 2150 at $ 99K. Power cords effect it? OF COURSE! It would be a POS if not! 

NO amount of sensible evidence will convince a self-confirmed skeptic. It will always be discounted, i.e. "He's a reviewer... can't be trusted," etc.

Re: valuation of cables, we have among us some of the world's most "thrifty" people and there again, NO amount of talk will get them to endorse even modest expense when they got a cord for free! The Wallet rules them more than theory. I know, as I was one of them. The arrogance and self-assurance is off the  charts.

The assumptions the theorists make are lame. In an age of nanotechnology they're thinking like it's the stone age. Listen to them and you WILL build a compromised audio system. 

Finally, Zephyr, I did the same with a boom box and aftermarket power cord; clear difference in sound. With such cheap and easy testing you have to be REALLY pig-headed to not try it. 

Sautan 904,
The proper unbiased test to run is the double blind test that many of us learned about in our Experimental Psychology classes.  You ran, perhaps?, a single blind test. The double blind test is set up like this. One of your friends disguises all three cables. as fully as possible so that neither you, the " plugger in-er",  nor the listener knows what speaker cables are being plugged in. They should be labeled with arbitrary meaningless letters or numbers for documenting purposes. In the alternative, the listener should not be able to even see the person who's plugging in the speaker wire.  Multiple random plugins of each wire pair should be done.  This eliminates any experimenter bias, i.e., when conscious, as you acknowledged, or, unconscious biasing that is transmitted by you to the listener. Also, when you misled the listener about which wire was being played  in your test, you obviously  introduced bias. Maybe your results will then be the same but you, and we, could then rest assured that no bias has been introduced into your experiment. 

Douglas,

You keep attacking the others. Why not provide all this evidence that you speak of?

If a Boulder amp at a cost of 99K needs a special power cord in order to function then surely the power cord is included in the box with the amp?

Seriously why would anyone sell a 99K amplifier and skimp so much on the design that the power cord it comes with is totally inadequate and it requires the user to buy a special power cord to function correctly?

I dont doubt that these ridiculous issues actually exist, as your experience and Fremer’s have confirmed it.

However, my questions still stands - why buy extremely expensive equipment so poorly made that it is inadequate out of the box? Where is the sense in this? Isn’t an amplifier supposed to maximize source reproduction and minimize everything else that is extraneous - isn’t that what a great amplifier design ought to do?

(I do understand that it is possible to design something that is highly sensitive to power cords and speaker wires and interconnects but WHY would a designer build a 99K amp based on such a terrible design)