High End System Building. How important is the matching, cabling and room? Thoughts ?

Although I didn't realize it at the time I was and have been a cable denier.  for the longest time I would cheap out and get Amazon basics cables and then get mad at my equipment because it didn't sound the way I wanted it to .

A couple of months ago I decided to try and upgraded Coaxial cable from Pangea, and I could hear some minor differences in the depth and imaging. So of course I decided to take another step up and I bought a really expensive cable for me - about 100 bucks which was the AQ carbon digital coax.  that was the beginning of a journey and a Sonic revelation.  Since then I've upgraded up the line and with each step I literally hear a little more detail wider soundstage in some cases better base response and more detailed richer bass response and most recently with an AQ coffee coax…well it's a pretty good cable.  OK it's really good astonishing the difference really from where I started I'm not sure it's gonna be worth it for everyone because it was pretty darn expensive but it was apparently the weakest link in my system.  since then I've been exploring speaker cables and power cables and frankly it all makes a difference.  the downside with this is that the interactions of the acoustics of your room will certainly flavor the music as well as the type of cable you use will also flavor the music just like with speakers and just like with amplifiers so it takes a little bit of experimentation to get something that's right for you.

best advice I can see on your audiophile journey is to try some stuff make sure there are returns or at the very least if you buy it used that you'll be able to flip it and sell it to someone else if it doesn't work for you so you're not risking a ton of money. 

@patrickcarey 

Great story. Thanks. That is how it starts and over time better components allow greater positive effect of wires… and it goes on and on.

@patrickcarey thats why at Infigo cables we give customers a free trial. Stuff you spend on has to work for your system. 

@immatthewj whats wrong with some people. Room acoustics are ok but the way stuff is built is paramount. 

@calvinj , you made an analogy to cars (engines and aerodynamics) and here is another one this thread makes me think of. I had a buddy who spent as much time with guns as audiophiles here do with achieving sonic results. He used to tell me that his formula for properly scoping a rifle was to spend as much on the scope as one spent on the rifle. Meaning a $1700 rifle should have a $1700 scope (and that was over ten years ago, so the Lord only knows what that rifle and scope would go for now).

So I did that once ($1700 and $1700) and I am going to come right out and say that it was not the best money I ever spent. But the thing is: if I could have only bought one or the other, would I have been better off buying just the scope with no rifle to put it on? Or would just the rifle actually turned out to be handier, even without a scope? Yeah, I know . . . it’s probably apples & oranges. . . .