What % Of Your System Are Your Cables?

@jrareform I have a voltage adjuster (occasionally line voltage drops down to 90V) and a power conditioner (both Furman). I have compared speaker cables (Cardas 101 AWG 14 vs. Pearlacoustics AWG 4-5: so MASSIVE DIFFERENCE), and I can't tell them apart. Put them on A-B speaker outs bare wire (no possible effect of connectors) hooked up simultaneously, so could switch with a click of a button. Absolutely nothing different.

I compared some interconnects, no difference: standard, some Cardass, BlueJeans.

Power cables: the problem is that most aftermarket cables are not UL/CE listed, so present a home insurance liability. And after all, I don't buy it to begin with. 

My room is also treated, I get my soundstage etc. I do notice differences between tubes, phono cartridges, phono preamps, speakers, even a tiny bit with DACs, but a lot of audiophile stuff I tried and cannot replicate (e.g., digital delivery software: Roon vs. Audirvana: nothing; USB cables: nope). My system is listed here on audiogon if you care to check it out.

@oberoniaomnia very interesting to hear your experiences! Wow 90V drops!! I thought mine was bad for being between 124 and 126

I wonder sometimes if this cable thing is a system thing. Like maybe some systems are more sensitive? I don’t want to say "better" because I have no idea what your system sounds like and that would be a cruddy thing to say. But maybe it’s more just about certain speakers, amplifiers etc having more sensitivity to wiring changes. Or maybe your stock wiring is just amazing?

If you get a chance to try out some shunyata cabling, do it. I had tried several bran ds too and was in the camp of "I don’t know if I hear anything different" whenever I would try different speaker cabling. For example, going from my amazon basics wiring to mogami wiring was like "hmm I think I hear a change" but then going from the mogami to the shunyata it was like "holy crud - it’s not subtle at all!". My amplifier doesn’t have an A/B so to be fair, I had to swap cables or have a friend do it. But in most cases I could discern little differences, except in the case where I purchased the component or cable. It has to be clear in order for me to shell out funds.

The same goes for power conditioning. Not impressed at all with the ones I had tried thus far until I tried out a gemini 4 from shunyata, and ordered a gemini 8 immediately since I have a 20 amp line. Difference from gemini 4 to 8 was not noticeable at all just as a side note.

I am actually about to head to the hi-fi shop to try some high quality interconnects, the final frontier for my system. I am super skeptical again about these having any noticeable or beneficial improvement to my system. But I’ll be happy to be wrong as I was about speaker cabling and digital cabling!

Friendly note to those buying cabling: find yourself a hi-fi shop. They will usually cut massive discounts on stuff you’d pay full price for online. And let you try before you buy! PSA over

Just did the math. 7%. Higher than I thought. I prefer DIY, but my time has also become increasingly scarce with youth hockey. Analog interconnects are more than  digital and I don’t have much in the digital front. I use the dac in the streamer which is fed by a .8m Audioquest Ethernet cable from a fiber optic modem w/ an isolated 5g out, so only 2 digital cables. And a balanced cable out to preamp. But everything does add up. I didn’t include treatment and conditioning, power cables yes. I’m actually surprised it’s that high. 

I tried those expensive cables, it’s all squirrel food for your brain…sent them all back and use Blue Jeans cable a well built cable at a fair price….

Only a moron would hook up $10k speakers to a $10k amplifier with $10 of lamp cord.