Cabling is the least “sexy” part of our systems and, only until quite recently, I never gave power cords, interconnects, and speaker cables a helluva lotta thought. When I more or less finished with assembling the various pieces of hardware I’ve owned the next step, logically, had to be cables. After all, I had an amp, a preamp, a dac, a disc player, a turntable, a streamer/server. What else could I spend money on?
Up until this particular moment I had been satisfied with the stock cables and whatnot that came with most of the aforementioned stuff. Plug it in, listen. Simple. I bought my speaker cables at Radio Shack or Best Buy or whatever.
My first dive into spending more money/improving “things” was with a power conditioner - a Furitech something or other. Okay, good.
Then I read something somewhere, maybe here, about power cords. Hmmm. Okay. I’ll go there.
Got all the cords for everything that didn’t have one built-in. Wow, the cords certainly LOOKED and felt far more substantial than the stock cords. Good.
Then I went to interconnects. Again, the simple color coordinated ones from stock or aftermarket were simply no good anymore - my equipment deserved better. So I got a whole buncha interconnects. Again, good.
Mind you, I’m a pretty cheap bastard when it comes to parting with my money on things that are pretty much completely out of sight 99% of the time, so I went with the “cheapseats” versions of the brands I had read about. Synergistic Research, Furutech, Goertz, Anti-Cables, Cardas, and a few others I’ve forgotten.
Did going from stock cords and interconnects and speaker wire from Radio Shack improve things? Well, yes - but to what measurable degree is debatable. Was it worth the expenditure? Well, again yes. Compared to my amps and preamps the cost to explore the possibilities was negligible. When I noticed an improvement I upgraded within the particular brand, when I didn’t I purchased other brands. S’periments!
When I couldn’t detect a difference or an improvement did I feel that I squandered my money?
Nah. People here with far more technical experience than I will ever have convinced me that being curious about improving things is worth the minor expenditures I’ve employed.
The dialogues for/against more expensive cables/fuses etc will never be satisfied. Can you taste the difference between an $8 bottle of wine and an $80? The answer is, sometimes. If you can taste the difference is it just different, or is one better than the other?
Why am I submitting this in this forum? Because until I heard Thiel I was satisfied. After/since my first pair of 2.3’s it’s all been...tremendously fun. I bought my first pair of 3.5’s from a guy in Massachusetts for $800, driving 3 hours to meet him in a parking lot.
$400 apiece for speakers that sounded THAT good?
How could I not? Alluva sudden I became aware that making whatever improvements I could made sense. Thiels made me an audiot - and I don’t regret it.
