Hello yogiboy! When it comes to interconnects, It's a bit trickier than with speaker wires. The wire itself matters. The plugs matter. How they are connected together matters. Of course, these things matter in speaker wires too, but speaker wires carry a lot of current and interconnects don't. Speaker wires deliver power. Interconnects deliver pressure; Itsy bits of pressure. There is something called impedence. The key to understand it is in the core of the word: IMPEDE. It concerns the difficulty the signal encounters trying to get through the wire. Any cable has capacitance and inductance of its own. If a signal leaves a component (CD player, tuner, phono preamp, a "high level" signal: 2 - 5 volts maximum) with a low output impedence and goes into a preamp or power amp with a high input impedence, that's the best situation. The opposite: a high impedence output feeding a low impedence input, problems are likely. Now, in modern equipment, this is not common. But some solid state devices have moderate input impedences. Oh dear, that can be problematic!. High feeding high or low feeding low, generally - no problem. But that does not mean that the wire doesn't matter. It only means that a mis-match will not overwhelm the effect of the wire. The wire's own characteristics interact with the gear on both ends in complex ways. It IS predictable, but it takes time to do the testing and the math. Too bad, but true. Only super geeks have time for that! Get a bunch of cable and try them out, one after the other on the most difficult music you have.
Just the other night (11/24/2021) I was testing seven very different sets of interconnects. I was very skeptical of a widely advertised brand of cable I purchased years ago and never trusted. It seemed too light in weight to contain anytihing of value. Today, I ordered two more sets of them! They obviously outperformed all the others. (I also ordered, used, one set each of two other well regarded cables.) Three of the competitors were DIY cables using Cable TV wire, flat (300 ohm) TV antenna wire (obviously unshielded), and high quality microphone cable. All three of those cables sounde very good and practically indistingable from one another. Two of the other cables were proported to be high quality, moderately priced products. They were equal to one another, but inferior to the DIY wires. The last contender was made of a thin co-axial cable designed to carry video signals. It was slightly better than the moderately priced cables, but not quite as good as the other DIY cables. But the very lightweight, widely advertised cable was clearly more transparent, open, revealing more very subtle details that make the recording seem more "real." I'm not here to sell cables. I advocate DIY projects. But, I want the best sounding cabkes I can get (at a reasonable price). The point is: there ARE differences among interconnects, our pre-conceived notions not withstanding. It doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg. Try discontinued, top-of-the-line cables from a year or two ago. Buy used cable. You don't have to break it in. It sounds like what it sounds like shortly after you open the box! Imagine comparing three new cables, right out of the box. You have no idea what they will sound like in three months! And you're paying top dollar! Eeek! A fool's errand, no doubt!
And just to be sure you realize just how many variables there are - - - the best cable betwen an amp and DAC may not the best cable between two other cmponents. I found some very appealing (Alpha-Core) cables at USEDCABLES.com and ordered them. I compared them (12-02-2021) to the DIY microphone cable interconnects, and the "best" commercial cables from the DAC to power amp test. While sounding very friendly and pleasant - one could say "nice and smooth," - they finished 3rd of three, and the DIY cables were much more open and transparent. The used "Alpha-Core" cable was very dymanic, but lacked the depth and super clarity of the DIY cables. How's that for odd? How can one cable be more dynamic than another? Wow, this may be more fun than tube rolling! So a cable may work beautifully in one part of a system and less well in another. I bought some used Pangea SE cables also. We'll check them out soon.
Well, I think I've told you all the helpful things I can. Cable sniffing is like tube rolling - with eels! Have fun! Happy Listening!
For the curious, equipment used in my interconnecting cable tests were: Asus laptop computer, Media Monkey software, Wireworld Silver Starlight Seven USB cable, Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 DAC (has a volume control), the cables being tested, Starke Sound AD4-320 power amp in the bridged mode, Ultralink Ambience 2.2 speaker cables, Magnepan LRS speakers.
For that other Preamp to electronic crossover: Akitika preamp, the cables being tested, DBX 223S crossover, Starke Sound AD4-320 power amp, 14 guage lamp cord, Golden Ear BRX speakers.
