Threads like this really amaze me, regardless of who contributes to them and how much or little they've spent on their systems and cables.
Having said that, there's obviously a LOT of different concerns regarding cable selection being voiced in this specific thread with sound quality and design integrity only being a small part of them. Brand recognition, resale value, status amongst audiophile peers, etc... are also raising their heads. While nobody wants to "lose their shirt" when buying / selling gear, selecting products that are properly designed in the first place typically negates many of the problems associated with having to worry about resale value.
Smart people realize that interconnects can change "flavours" when you change their positions within the same system. As such, the cable itself doesn't have a "flavour" or measure of "neutrality", it becomes part of the component to component interphase. What you hear is the result of that specific synergy / summation of complex impedances and how the specific components react / load up / transfer power into those specific impedances.
If a cable maintains the same sound in every system in every component to component interphase, it is doing something so wrong that nothing else will overcome that colouration / design flaw. I'm not saying that a cable can't display similar characteristics when mating various component configurations, but that those characteristics may vary in intensity somewhat due to the specific combo's used.
Hopefully, some of you folks will learn this sooner rather than later i.e. before you go broke and are very unhappy with your systems. I know that some get the basic idea as i can see it in their posts. Having said that, speaker cables are another story. There are specific electro-mechanical design characteristics that allow some cables to work more universally than others in well designed systems. Systems that are less than well designed / put together may require lesser cables to act as an "electrical band-aid". Sean
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PS... How does a cable achieve "greatness"? Is it by the manufacturer providing a bunch of freebies to reviewers and getting them to list them in their "reference system" in glossy mag reviews? Or is it achieved by building up a bunch of hype on the net via on-line reviews and end user commentaries? I've tried a bit from all three camps and quite honestly, some of them are horrid sounding AND so electrically backwards that its' not funny.
My experience is that "great" cables come with "great" price tags. That's because someone has to pay for all the freebies / discounted cables that the manufacturer went through just to gain the public notoriety that they've achieved. Just remember that the grass is always greener on the other side and there's always a "better" / "most amazing" cable that will be available next month or the month after that.
Compare profit margins between cables and components and you'll see why there's SOOOO much hype surrounding this part of the market. This isn't to say that there isn't a difference in cables, only that much of the differences are in the component to component interphase, not the cables themselves.
