10 years ago, when I got back into hifi, I bought watt/puppies and a krell amp/preamp/cd player. Thought i was the cat's meow. Tried a couple of interconnects for about 20 minutes... basically heard no difference, but, I did hear speaker cable differences, and at the time Transparent was the Wilson cable of preference and bought some supers, in part, because I was told it was a good system match, and they seemed a LITTLE better. Got some less expensive Transparent cables for interconnects, still have em around. Tried an expensive power cable for the amp, (realtively, 300 bucks) and thought it was a waste of money.
Fast forward past a home theater with Watt/Puppies, a second living room system with Watt/Puppies, Alto Be's and now MBL101e's. 5 or 6 CESs, 100 stereophile mags, and a few different dealers. I have to go through 7, yes 7 different pairs of speaker cables. Then I end up going through 3 power conditioners, and 5 different interconnects, and I may still try one or two more. I think, as I have listened more critically, as I have had more disposal income, and maybe, as I have been more desensitized to the prices of cabling, I actually have spent more time listening to the different interconnects, than I had to in order to choose the 101s. And then, I tried a power cord of all things on my Meitner cd player, that actually made a relatively large difference... shocked the hell out of me!
I am not really sure why now, I hear such big differences in so many different things, I still have found ICs to make the least difference, speaker wires to make the most, but I no longer laugh at anything anybody hears.. or doesn't hear. I know when I bought my first watt/puppies, that was so expensive I didn't want to hear crap about multi-thousand dollar cables, the dealer may have lost the sale at that point. Now, I want to hear system synergy, I want to have it all flow, and although I abhor the prices of cables.... I have sadly spent the money to optimize my system.
So I stand by my original post... I don't use them anymore, but for a decently made, reasonably performing cable, at a relatively inexpensive pricepoint, although a little grainy compared to the best I have heard, I find ProSilway IIs and Magic Woofer Harmonix cables to be excellent performers.
AND, used, you can get 2pr of ICs and speaker cables for what? somewhere between 1000-1500..
Cheers,
Chris