Are cable “upgrades” just as likely to make your system sound worse?

The answer for me at least and probably all of us, is room, system, music and personal preference dependent.  We all need and prefer different sound characteristics. And to those who say the problem is more evident in less reveling systems, that’s incorrect. I ‘fixed’ my cable issues with Wireworld’s top solid silver cables which, by design, are warm with accurate detail. 
My cable merry go round started some years ago when I thought it would be cool to hear more detail in this higher end system.  I run Wilson speakers, all top Conrad-Johnson electronics and a dCS front end.  We had just moved to Florida and my room is large and highly reflective glass, tile and masonry.  
Nordost cables give lots of detail at the expense of musical richness.  For some systems, their top lines are great but didn’t work for me.  I was thrilled to hear all that detail but over time missed the richness of the music.  Their Valhalla 2 speaker cable was way better than their lessor lines but the Wireworld platinums gave me just what I wanted.  The detail is still there but in balance with the richness.  Acoustic guitars have a real wood sound as does the big bass.  I have finally arrived.

Most music, not all, is about frequency range. The hardest part is bass. Our ears are pretty attuned at locality and direction, even of very low tones far away. Our rooms are tricky to get bass to sound right. Personally it took years of fiddling, plus two subwoofers.  But when it works it’s hi fi. My cables are just ones used in studios from Amazon for 20 bucks or whatever since the system is balanced. The speaker cables are short and monoblocks keep them that way. With proper bass setup, I tried the top of the line nordost amongst others and they only remove bass. Now that can be a positive if your room or setup doesn’t have accurate bass. But why bother? Fix the bass, it’s worth it.  

While there is no question cables can make a difference, the current commercial cable market is nothing less than pure alchemy. Until consumers, equipment reviewers and dealers push for some objective standards and information it is a shell game. Every other type of audio equipment sold publishes standards such as s/n ratio, etc. but not the cable industry. It boggles my mind that someone is willing to spend thousands on what amounts to a black box. Yes, of course, amp, speaker, and turntable specs do not tell us how a particular piece of equipment will sound to an individual user but specs can help narrow the choices and differentiate between levels of sophistication, but not so with cables. The infamous test many years ago when Absolute Sound compared Home Depot extension cords with big bucks cables remains an eye opener. They wouldn’t do that today because the cable manufacturers who advertise would pull their ads. 

Great example of how it is strongly dependent on your equipment. I had the privilege of auditioning a pair of Odin 2 in my system and they were the most amazing, musical, natural and detailed cables I have ever heard.

As did I.  Great cables for big bucks.  And again, in my system, they favored detail over musicality.