What process do you use to purchase cables?

😂😂😂😂😂. Me too!

I use Paypal

I think some dealers try and do a pretty good job of being relatively unbiased. You have to know them.  But there are practically an infinite number of cable companies and they can only carry a few. Then there is the problem of territories. On good solid well established brands like Transparent they do not support multiple retail outlets in a single area. My primary audio dealer can’t get them… so I have to buy them from a different vendor.  

I love this quote from Nelson Pass, “We have a general recommendation about interconnects, and speaker cables: They should cost less than the amplifier, and contain at least some conductive material.”

I think first, is establish a budget. Then experiment. It is one of the fun aspects of this game. The choices are truly limitless. Reviews certainly help to guide you, but in reality you have to hear the cables in your room, your system, and as a whole. At some point decide when your sound is “good to go”. You’ll know. There are tried and true brands and cables from those brands, then there are the fringe brands and then DIY. All can be great in the right situation.

This is how I went about it:

- consider my budget. I did not even think of considering anything more than 50% of what I think the budget will allow

- read up on stuff

- as I regard most of what is there to read is 5% information and 95% marketing, I make a “gut” call.

- as I knew of no retailer at the time (10 years ago was when I bothered to fool around with this cable stuff) who accepts cable returns, this meant to err if you must at the low end of the $ spectrum and hope for the best. 

- As I had a friend at the time who ran through cables like seltzer water, I was able to borrow some from time to time for s-@^s ‘n kicks that were considerably outside of what I would ever dream of spending and see if the extra $s made any difference.

@ emergingsoul: “…buy on faith and have patience.…”

You said it, not me.

I went to Catholic schools. I remember one religion class when I was a freshman in HS. The priest was talking about how we know God exists: “Look out there window, at the beauty of nature. Only an Intelligent Being could create it”. At the end of class, he asks for questions. I raise my hand: “When I look out the window, I see physical and biological processes at work. I can’t pretend to know whether or not a God created them”… and off to the principal’s office I went! There was not much they could do about me because I routinely graded at the top of the class and Catholic schools compete for funding from the diocese in part based on student performance. I got a C- in religion class needless to say, but straight A+ in everything else.

Yup. I gave up on faith when I was a teenager: science/empiricism for me! And patience is for my child or cat that misbehaves!