Are cable “upgrades” just as likely to make your system sound worse?

Most music, not all, is about frequency range. The hardest part is bass. Our ears are pretty attuned at locality and direction, even of very low tones far away. Our rooms are tricky to get bass to sound right. Personally it took years of fiddling, plus two subwoofers.  But when it works it’s hi fi. My cables are just ones used in studios from Amazon for 20 bucks or whatever since the system is balanced. The speaker cables are short and monoblocks keep them that way. With proper bass setup, I tried the top of the line nordost amongst others and they only remove bass. Now that can be a positive if your room or setup doesn’t have accurate bass. But why bother? Fix the bass, it’s worth it.  

While there is no question cables can make a difference, the current commercial cable market is nothing less than pure alchemy. Until consumers, equipment reviewers and dealers push for some objective standards and information it is a shell game. Every other type of audio equipment sold publishes standards such as s/n ratio, etc. but not the cable industry. It boggles my mind that someone is willing to spend thousands on what amounts to a black box. Yes, of course, amp, speaker, and turntable specs do not tell us how a particular piece of equipment will sound to an individual user but specs can help narrow the choices and differentiate between levels of sophistication, but not so with cables. The infamous test many years ago when Absolute Sound compared Home Depot extension cords with big bucks cables remains an eye opener. They wouldn’t do that today because the cable manufacturers who advertise would pull their ads. 

Great example of how it is strongly dependent on your equipment. I had the privilege of auditioning a pair of Odin 2 in my system and they were the most amazing, musical, natural and detailed cables I have ever heard.

As did I.  Great cables for big bucks.  And again, in my system, they favored detail over musicality.

Almost everything you do in this hobby results in a tradeoff of some sort or another. I believe this is one the reasons that relying on equipment and cable, etc. reviews and moving forward based on those reviews doesn't always produce results that are pleasing to us. Suggesting that buying only things that can be returned is one answer but that doesn't deal with the circumstance  where you don't fully realize what the tradeoff was and whether you are pleased with that tradeoff for a period of time. Return policies always have limits and you may not realize what the tradeoff was until it is too later to return the item(s), Often I will seek what I think will be an improvement only to discover that the only thing I did was change the sound but that the change is only that and actually not an improvement at all. Can keep you on your toes.