Audioquest Firebird Zero

I've tried several speaker cables over the past year; Shunyata Alpha and Sigma, Wireworld Silver Eclipse series 7, Audioquest Oak and Redwood, Audience Au24 SX, and I own Clarus Crimson speaker cables. I prefer the Clarus over all of the aforementioned speaker cables. I've had the Audioquest Firebird Zero speaker cables on loan for three days. My initial thoughts were everything is a little clearer through them compared to my Clarus Crimson. Not a night and day difference, but definitely clearer. The Clarus are slightly more 3-dimensional to my ears. My wife on the other hand just keeps saying the AQ sounds sharper, clearer, there are less impurities in the music. I'm not sure what she means by impurities, but she keeps repeating it. Maybe she means a darker background? My plan was to have a home audition of the Thunderbird Zero speaker cables, but they had banana plugs on the amplifier end and I can't use them. I took the Firebirds with the logic that if I can't hear a difference between them and my current cables I didn't need to have a home audition of the Thunderbirds. $14K for an eight foot pair of speaker cables is freaking crazy and sad! It would be easy for me to dismiss it  because there isn't a night and day difference, but once you hear the difference it's very hard to ignore. Financially I just can't justify spending $14K on speaker cables and hope to hear the AQ Thunderbirds sometime next week. Once again I'm reminded that absolutely everything makes a difference. For those that can easily afford $14K, $20K or more speaker cables I understand, because cables can be equivalent to a component change. Does it ever end?