Aliexpress Marketplace practices, be for warned.

I’m torn about this. On the one hand we have legit cable companies selling their wares with (in some cases), literally, astronomical markups. On the other hand we have shameless copycats on AliExpress selling knockoff cables for orders of magnitude less money. So who’s taking advantage of consumers here? I’d argue both. I’d also be willing to bet that no one could tell many of these products apart in blind testing. Assuming similar materials and build quality, all the rest is a big basket of biases and placebos. I’m not saying that good cables don’t make a difference, they do, what I’m saying is that price is not the determining factor. More money does not equal better sound quality when it come to cables.

A good number of alibaba cables will probably be resold used as originals at some point in their lives, casting doubt on the used cable market in general which, perversely, benefits manufacturers of expensive originals.

The consumers of high end cables are not being taken advantage of. There is no one making anyone buy them. From my experience with them, while there are different flavors of sound, within a given sound type more money buys you better sound. If it is worth it to you is a decision you must make.

There are plenty of budget cables on the market, so manufacturing or purchasing fakes to me is unethical.

The penalty for counterfeiting was a little more harsh in Colonial times. 

Blue Jean Cables. 👍