Why pay so much?

Well. James Randi used to offer $1,000,000 for proof of proof of the supernatural, and he put out the reward for people claiming speaker wire mattered in sound fidelity, and no one would do it. Not Pear Anjou? Or the reviewer who reviewed the $10k speaker wire from Pear Anjou as causing your feet to do the "proevrbial" tap dancing. He stopped doing the offer recently. I think he retired.

There still are several companies that offer $10k+ to prove the supernatural.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prizes_for_evidence_of_the_paranormal

Go claim your reward! But be sure you break in your billions of years old copper and silver speaker wiring though.

😉

Now I’m getting trollish. I was hoping to open up discussion about this, but all I received was anger and name calling like "Troll"
...

But.

Well, there’s a sucker born every minute. People used to literally buy snake oil for medicine. I suppose this is the 21st and 20th century version of people buying snake oil medicine. Stuff like this has been going on for millenniums. The tendency to buy on to this stuff must be hereditary and gene orientated like how some people genetically are more susceptible to sip the kool aid and join cults.

snake oil/ˈsnāk ˌoil/nounINFORMAL•NORTH AMERICAN

1. a substance with no real medicinal value sold as a remedy for all diseases.
   • a product, policy, etc. of little real worth or value that is promoted as the solution to a problem."the new tax plan was denounced as snake oil"

When he set his sights on audiophile gadgets James Randi first offered 1M to a customer of mine if he could pass the double blind test for the Intelligent Chip. That was way back in 2005. Negotiations eventually broke down, however, just as they did later with Fremer and the cable Challenge. Who knows why someone who made his name going after dowsers and spoon-benders wanted to go after audiophiles? My guess is he wanted some action. I was the subject of five - count em! - of his Newsletters. One of his droogies challenged me to a judo fight on board Randi’s yacht during a retreat in the Caribbean. Too much fun! By the way, Randi got a lot of his $$$ from Johnny Carson.

By the way, I don’t think you’re a troll. I know you are.

Well, I think the OP makes a very rational point, one that I completely agree with. The cost vs. benefit proposition goes completely off the rails with uber-expensive cabling.  I have Triode Wire Labs and Cerious Technology ICs's and power cables and they are pretty pricey but to my ears worth it.  However, I am not tempted at all to move up the IC food chain.   Belen and Blue Cables make excellent budget cabling, used by professional studios.  I have Supra Ply 3.4 speakers cable which is very affordable and performs well and very affordable.

What blows me away are folks that spend their cash on cheap crystals to put on their components or silly dots to affix to their windows expecting some SQ improvement. Same thing with the "fuse-heads" who salivate over some new "colored" fuse that will dramatically change the sound of their system.  Price is no bother for these adherents, but I would suggest that virtually all who adopt these pricey tweaks are victims of confirmational bias, the effect of which is more profound the more expensive the tweak is.

At any rate, I can't possible see how you can can flame the OP or call him a troll on this particular post. He has the better end of the argument.

I only have one question.

WTH would the op revive a three year old thread in which he received just the same criticism as now?

Was he expecting the audiophool mentality to have changed any for the better?

Maybe some people just enjoy getting butt hurt........

Uberwaltz,
The answer is to inform music lovers of the fallacy of spending lots of money on goofy expensive cabling which is unnecessary.