Does using same brand cables improve performance?

While there may be a family sound in many cases it is not always the best sound. A company may make superior interconnects but mediocre speaker cables. Some of the really high end products from Cardas or Transparent Reference will all be good, but you may like the sound better with a mixture of them with others. I use Cardas Golden Reference speaker wire and Van den Hul The First Ultimate for interconnects. But just stringing together a bunch of good deals is unlikely to be successful. Cables are an inexhaustible source of controversy as they are so system and listener dependent. Someone is sure to tell you to buy Anti Cable and save money. Personally, I am as cheap as anyone short of Scrooge McDuck , but I don't think you can get the same performance with cheap cable. Mapleshade comes closest, but they also make very expensive cable. The critical thing is to analyze what the basic sound of the components you have and how you want to reinforce it or change it. No cable is totally neutral, you want to try to find ones that will work well together. Easily said, but difficult in practice. There is no easy guide here and anyone that will say there is is either inexperienced or fooling themselves.

Agree use the cable best suited to the application. All the same is a reviewers come on. I say Boulderdash!

I have Sophia 1's and had an ARC VS115 with an ARC CD# MKll. I would start with all copper cabling as a starting place (the 110 and the DV-60 are fairly analytical and so are the Sophias) . Live with this until something starts to bother you then try a few different cables in different places and hear what happens. I found it less confusing to start with all cables from one company, then when you introduce another company's cable identifying the difference/change was easier. I always try new cable between CDP and pre first, even if I liked the sound I'd move the cable to between the pre and amp just to hear the difference between the two locations.