If your were to assemble a vintage system ?

For a recent non-believer, I used an Onkyo SR500 Dolby Digital receiver--purchased reconditioned for $200 (they're $250 - $300 new) against some well regarded separates. It's rated at 65 watts x 2 stereo per the FTC guidelines into 8 ohms. Distortion is 0.08% from 20-20k from 1 watt to 65 watts into 8 ohms. It has a "direct" bypass feature that supposedly bypasses all the digital/DSP for analog stereo signals.

The Onkyo was put up against the well regarded Bryston 4B 300 wpc power amp and a Bryston 2 channel pre-amp. They were driving a pair of expensive floor standing KEF speakers and the source was a high-end Marantz CD player. The person who owns this system is very proud of it and has spent a lot of time getting what he considers to be the best sound possible.

I had the Bryston owner pick the level he wanted to do the comparison at while listening to his system. I then used pink noise to level match the Onkyo to his system while he was out of the room. The Onkyo was running in its "Stereo Direct" analog mode.

I called him back in to listen, he sat down in the sweet spot and I replayed the same CD track he'd used to pick the levels. He immediately started complaining about how bad the Onkyo sounded. He said it sounded thin, compressed, harsh and a few other things. I smiled and turned the Onkyo off and the music kept playing. He'd said all those negative things about his own Bryston gear!

With him red faced, we proceeded to do at least an hour of listening with me swapping cables, or only pretending to, when he requested a switch. He listened to his favorite audiophile CDs. I did lots of swaps and fake swaps and during each would ask him which he thought he was listening to. In the end, his answers were roughly 50% correct which is the same as if he'd been randomly guessing. He even finally admitted, he couldn't tell which was which and WAS only guessing! I took his place and also couldn't hear any difference between the lowly receiver and his prized Bryston gear.

What needs to be stated plainly here is that the only thing this experiment demonstrated was that the use of cables of the correct specifications should not be audibly any different than each other. If you use an appropriate gauge wire, and the proper connectors: you should be golden regardless of how much—or little—you spend on cables. Consequently, you should probably just stick with Monoprice, Mogami, or AmazonBasics for your audio cable needs if you don’t care about how they look.