What process do you use to purchase cables?

There’s no need for any of this confusion. Buy a reasonably priced well constructed set of cables and a preamp that has tone controls. Our forefathers who designed equipment in the past recognized I need to be able to adjust what we listen to because rooms and equipment sounded different. It was impossible to build something that fit every situation. So one day somebody said, how about tone controls? Why nobody talks about them anymore is beside me. Now everybody uses power cords, interconnects and speaker wire as tone controls.The only people that the lack of tone controls serves is the dealers and manufactures that make the stuff. They are slowly winning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_control_circuit

here’s just a little excerpt from the above link. It sounds like they’re talking about cables. It looks like a cable is just a passive tone control.

In their most basic form, tone control circuits attenuate the high or low frequencies of the signal. This is called treble or bass "cut". The simplest tone control circuits are passive circuitswhich utilize only resistors and capacitors or inductors. They rely on the property of capacitive reactance or inductive reactance to inhibit or enhance an AC signal, in a frequency-dependent manner. Active tone controls may also amplify or "boost" certain frequencies. More elaborate tone control circuits can boost or attenuate the middle range of frequencies.

The simplest tone control is a single knob that when turned in one direction enhances treble frequencies and the other direction enhances bass frequencies. This was the first type of tone control, typically found on radios and record players from the 1930s to the 1970s.

Me too, thanks for stepping up

Chris at PC really is a class act.  He has already gotten back to me and set me straight.  He wrote:

Hello Erik,

 

That cable is silver-plated copper.

 

Yes…we do carry a pure silver balance interconnect……we co-designed it with DH LABS, and they make it for us……we are waiting for a shipment of 2500 ft to arrive…hope to have it sometime in October.

 

It’s called CONNEX Bl-Ag   $10 a foot is the sale price. CONNEX-66070

 

That's the kind I have been using. :)

I didn’t. I make all my own; interconnects from 5-9s silver and fine silver RCA plugs; speaker cables from insulated litz cable or 5-9’s 16 AWG 5-9s silver with PTFE insulation tubing.