The Cable Company advice?

Example: Ask the average speaker salesperson who sells a variety of high-end speakers what his specific favorite speaker/brand is.  He will more than likely not  let you pin him down to selecting one speaker brand over another, as not to show any bias towards one brand over another.  Happy listening.

lalitk

And please stay away from cables with voodoo accessories touted as fine tuning devices.

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Unless it’s Synergistic Research.  Starting with the Atmosphere UEF Series - or more recent offerings.  The tuning modules are the result of years of R&D.   Yes, they work - quite well.  My system’s SQ is the best ever now that I’ve implemented a full SR loom.    And I've auditioned a lot of different cables over the years.

“My system’s SQ is the best ever now that I’ve implemented a full SR loom”
@steakster 

I am not going to discount your or anyone’s experience, but after trying many cable brands, my takeaway: a straight forward high-purity copper cable often outperforms cables with fancy ‘tuning’ gadgets and exotic metallurgy. We all have our preferences, I prefer cables that don’t color the sound or add anything extra—just a pure, honest signal allowing me to appreciate music at much deeper level.  

@tcbrinkley 

I’ve had good luck with The Cable Co. I’d try them again and see if you get a different rep. My experience has been very positive. I explain what I’m after and what my budget is and the result is 3-5 products in the range I’ve asked for and then I just listen & listen…

Here’s another idea, maybe in parallel, as an experiment. Ask ChatGPT. Write a good prompt including as much detail about your system as you can. See what comes back. 

TCC will push Synergistic and Shunyata in that price range. But they will eventually include other brands into the conversation. The SR cables I tried I never liked despite their tuning devices really making a difference (gold bullet, silver bullet). Never got these to sound natural in my system. Your results may vary. 
I’ve had both good and bad experience with TCC. Their system of assigning a salesperson to a customer or customer to the sales person, whichever way you want to approach it, doesn’t really work too well. If and when you get in touch with your sales rep you can either borrow or purchase. If borrowing whatever the fee you paid excluding shipping will be credited to your purchase. You will also get frequent flyer discount. I’ve had to call TCC multiple times to place an order with no one calling me back. I would’ve bought the crap elsewhere except they had my credit from lending library that I wanted to use up. 

Overall would I recommend them? No. Not anymore. And I’ve neen using them for close to 20 years. As @lalitk pointed out, find a dealer that carries multiple brands who can let you try cables at home and steer you in a right direction. Or buy used, try and flip if not good.