Are audiophiles still out of their minds?

I thought the OP might actually benefit from hearing from someone who has quite rationally decided to spend >$10K on a piece of wire and >$100K on all the cables in my system

Firstly anyone with any sort of listening experience can appreciate that cables do sound different (note not necessarily better or worse, just different). If you doubt this then using anything other than the manufacturer's stock is a complete waste of time for you. In the case of my most expensive cable purchase (8' speaker connection) I listened to wires between $15K and $70K and chose the cheapest, it sounded best to me in my system and, surprise surprise it also seemed best "value for money"

Secondly the simple "either/or" of cables or other spending on other items such as room treatment or component upgrades is bogus. At this level of spending you should be using extensive and carefully selected room treatment - acoustic treatment, cables and isolation (stands, footers etc.)

As an aside don't you hate the glamor shots of one NYC dealer who shall remain nameless who parades installs of multi $100K systems into NY apartments with acres of glass and bare walls and no treatment in sight?

Most importantly the comparison of cable vs component upgrade is equally bogus. The reality is components at this level and up (and arguably at all levels) demonstrate the incremental improvements the right cables and other accessories can deliver. To give a specific example a DCS Paganini stack ($50K) sounds great out of the box with the stock cables but over the years I have spent $30K+ on BNC, AES/EBU and Power Cords all with great benefit -- and still have other steps to make. Yes I could have gotten a Vivaldi DAC for the same spend but each incremental step gave benefits I could hear and enjoy, and all of the cables are transferable if/when I do get that Vivaldi.

So in conclusion for me at least cable upgrades do give valid returns in the context of an appropriately set up system especially as they meaningful improvements at relatively low per unit incremental cost  - often much less than a comparable component upgrade (especially if cables are bought in the secondary market or at deep discount dealer demo as the majority of mine were)

dracule 1, OK, I'll try to be reasonable but hard to do so when your response to my polite posting is to immediately lambast my choice of digital equipment. Perhaps you've never heard DCS gear with the best cabling 😏

And yes I have evolved in the current system. Some examples

Digital: Veloce Black Cat -> Nordost Valhalla -> Audioquest Eagle Eye -> AudioQuest Wild -> Transparent Reference XL (note that these are not all increases in price, it went up and down)

Analog Interconnect: Nordost Tyr -> Nordost Valhalla -> WEL Signature (big jump at the end I know but I got a great deal on a 10M length of the latter which I needed and the impact was amazing)

Speaker: Nordost SPM (yes I've been around this game for a while!) -> Nordost Valhalla -> Synergistic Galileo LE (as you can see I can keep cables for 10-20 years)

Power: Nordost Brahma -> Valhalla -> AQ WEL Signature -> Synergistic Galileo LE

jafant -- re auditioning and your point dracule about most $$ is not best, most recent big change was speaker cable. Three local dealers allowed me home demo on Nordost Odin V1 ($35K), AQ WEL Signature (a bi-wire pair no less at $75K!) and SR Galileo LE at $15K. WEL was flat and boring, Odin was very clean but slightly lean and Galileo was just right. Subsequently I've improved the performance of the Galileo by adding a SR Transporter, nice that you can make a cable sound even better

So dracule we folks with money are not stupid as you constantly imply, we care about sound and want value for money but unlike some commenters on this thread we are open minded and happy for all the help the helpful people on these boards and the dealers we work with give us. Side note the dealer who loaned me the Odin actually lost $900 out of pocket as he accidentally put through my AmEx charge and then had to reverse it, for those who think dealers don't have to work for their money it's a salutary tale

Ok dracule1 -- for one last time let’s deconstruct your response and hopefully 😕 help you understand how you come across

It’s just not what I call realistic based on my experience as a regular concert attendee of classical and jazz music and as a classical guitar player.

Implication -- I’m the only one that knows what "real music" sounds like, my ears are better than yours, your opinion is worthless.

Note that your original ding at DCS was

BTW, dCS equipment never sounded correct to my ears. No amount of cabling can correct what I consider is inherent flaw.

"Never sounded correct to my ears" is fine, we each have preferences but you had to add "inherent flaw" which is an absolute statement and comes across as pejorative

Getting back to the important subject at hand, you didn’t answer my original question.

Sorry, how was it not clear when I described my process in a DCS rig of going from the "free" BNC and Firewire included in the box, to a $500 AQ Eagle Eye, to $1000 Valhalla (bought used), to $2000 AQ Wild to $3000 Transparent Ref XL. A good cross section of manufacturers and price points all with the same equipment and improvements at every step that were obvious. Could I have found other cables that worked? Maybe, but as others have noted my time is valuable and the combination of dealer recommendations (Brian Berdan) and manufacturer recommendations (John Quick) led me to the Transparent. Same story on the other sorts of cables in my system, especially power cords where I’ve been amazed by the improvements that have been possible.

If you were wise with your money

Another insult for no reason. I also spend money on mechanical watches ... and I like to buy my wife jewelry and first edition books, would you like to criticize that as well?

I did and saved tens of thousands of dollars over the years.

Bully for you. I’ve wasted way more money than my cables cost buying a new sports car and seeing it depreciate .. so what, who cares? At the end of the day every $ we spend helps someone else make a living, isn’t that a good thing, called capitalism? Spend money and feel happy, otherwise I think we have something called a recession.

Some of these cables you’ve tried have some of the highest markups in the industry. According to my industry source, it can be as high as 10:1.

Seems you don’t understand pricing theory, Dealer markup, manufacturers cost are all irrelevant -- what matters is price:value for the end buyer everything else is irrelevant. As it is apparent you as an end user place an extreme premium on "getting a deal". Have you never purchased software? What do you think that costs to make? As a consultant for the pharma industry I have a pretty good handle on the complexities of pricing and personally have no issue with the same manufacturer having a markup of 2:1 on their cheapest cable and 100:1 on their top of line, the latter will sell in tiny quantities relative to the former and btw the ads (and the trickle down from the positive feedback on the top of line) drives sales of the former. Plus I appreciate the dealer service I get. This is the same in every industry so why do we get so bothered?

If you feel happy with you’re purchase knowing what I’ve told you, then oh well

This just about takes the cake -- Dracule the savior here to tell it as it is. It's great you help people find bargains and different lines to consider but why do you have to be so holier than thou in the process? Oh and by the way I, like you, trust my ears at the end of the day and am very happy with my system. A quick review of my other posts show the small adjustments and tweaks I enjoy to get the most out of it, cables are part and not by any means the most important (acoustics and isolation matter more) but making those small changes whether they cost $1 or $10K is all part of the fun and fun is what it should be, not winning arguments so on that note this audiophile will exeunt this thread and return it to the OP

If you built an addition on to your house and the electrician told you that he could install electrical wire that would dramatically improve the performance of anything plugged into it but it would cost you a $100.00 a foot would you go for it?

JPS Labs in-wall power cable, only $24/foot I'm afraid but the answer is yes. And btw the electrician in question (now retired) worked on most of the studios in LA

ps head-head A/B auditioning of in-wall power cable is beyond even me 😀

Lest I compound the impression of being rich as Croesus 💰💰💰💰  I should not that for my most recent build out I did not use the JPS again but instead opted for the Synergistic Research cryo treated Romex at <$10/foot (I forget the actual price)

Do I think the JPS sounded better than the SR? No idea -- but the JPS was a bear to work with and given my use of other SR products I opted for the cheaper and lighter cable

One consideration on in-wall is that it has zero resale value ... unless you can demolish your construction, so cost of ownership is that much higher 

many want their system to make lousy recordings sound good, or make all recordings sound the same...as opposed to your system presenting the sound as recorded..

Could not agree more, while there are certainly lousy performances I've found that as my system has improved I've been able to find merits in recordings I'd previously dismissed and also found some recordings I'd previously thought to have great sound were only exciting an attractive sympathetic response somewhere else in my system. The last thing we want is homogenization of sound, the purpose of this listener's system should be to enable us to hear into the performance however it was recorded