Audiofeil and Inna, uncalled for on both counts. You both have a great deal of insight and experience, and it harms your reputation and credibility when you lower yourselves to name calling and vulgarity.
In testing dozens of brands/sets of cables I agree that the better cables do often cost a fair bit more. I've not been impressed by any cheap cables, including the Anticables and lower end products from brands which use passive networks or braided lower total gauge offerings. Perhaps that is due to the production costs of the better sounding cables and perhaps it is due to the marketing; either way is not my point. My point is that the better sounding cables I have used have tended to cost a lot more than the Home Depot DIY stuff. The trend, in my experience, has been that one has to accept spending as much as one or two good components to get superior performance from cables. That is a generalization, and I'm not interested in arguing it.
Back to the topic, typically a cable maker is not going to load his low end products with his best technological application, so the higher end stuff will sound better. However, as I'm sure Audiofeil would assert and I would agree, there are profound differences in performance across brand lines and a lower end product from one manufacturer may - note "may" - outperform another's top end products. However, I have found a threshold below which point one is not typically going to find superior sound. Like the search for a superior pre or source, you have to be willing to put something beyond the bare minimum into it in order to get superior results.
I assert the only way to know a cable's true sound is to test it in a group, a full system assessment of the brand.
