Cable Costs Relative to System

My primary system retails for about $15,000; I actually have $8,700 into the components, and could have done better had I purchased used speakers.

Okay, nine grand should be able to buy you great sound, and this stuff is as good or better than ones I've heard costing the same or considerabally more.

I used a dedicated line, upgraded outlet, $300 worth of interconnects, stock power cords and a $50 surge protector.

If I were going to make one dramatic investment, it would be in upgrading the speakers. Sorry to be on of the naysayers, and please don't flame me, but plain, old-fashioned science does not back up most of the hoo-hah around audiophile cables and power cords (and quite a few reputatable component manufacturers will tell you as much).

Rules of thumb never work in high end. Like the saying goes, all rules are made to be broken.

I think you could have spent 10% of that and bought custom cbales and not been able to tell the difference. Active components are far more important IMHO

Metaphysics,
Holy cow,yes you have come to your senses. My system is in the 75k range and I have spent less than 1k on cables. Cables important properties include inductance resistance and in some cases capacitance. Interconnects require shielding. Buy very pure,large gauge low inductance cables with good connecters and you are done. If retail is more than 2k-3k (used sub 50%) you are being robbed. It can be done for less than 1k. Most "high end" cable companies buy their cables from manufacturers and retail them @ 2000% profit.Any component you buy is typicaly retailed @ 5 times cost of manufacture. The reason some of thse cables make your system "sound better" despite not being low inductance,low resistance is that they actually roll off frequeny extremes making so so systems that are not flat at these frequencies more "musical". Take the money and buy better speakers or better source or room improvements.
Jim

Metaphysics started this chat in 2001 and hasn't posted in 4 years. Wow, this is the longest thread i've ever seen.

Anyway, after I had great speakers ($7k silverlines) and tube amps ($6k of Cary tubes) and sources ($5k turntable, $5k CD player), then speaker and interconnects made a big difference.

I made my own cables and used for many years. Replacing my $60 home made thick gauge cables with Kimber Monocles made a massive difference. The system "breathes" now... it has much more dynamic range.

I've done much A/B testing of cheapo interconnects and Kimber silver interconnects (over $1k each retail). There is a major noticeable difference in imagining, 3D layering, frequency rolloff, etc. The silver interconnects worked far better on my tube system than copper interconnects. But, I suspect impedance matching is a factor here.

In my $29K system, $4k are cables. In my experience, the impact of cables is (in order of importance):
1. speaker cables
2. interconnects between source and preamp
3. interconnects between preamp and amp
4. power cables (minor diff)
5. digital cables (no noticeable diff so far)

DJ