Cable Costs Relative to System

First of all I have to comment on your thanks to Trelja and that you were looking for that kind of information, Why? Did that actually sound like good information to you?

I'll give you a quick rundown on why I would consider there to be value on my opinions about cable. I was a dealer in high end audio products, I like high end sound but also finding equipment that is a top performer at a price point. When I started I realized that if you tried to find out anything about wire and how much to spend you would get as many answers as people you asked. Even the people that have time and experience can be full of bull. I had some equipment lines that were the best values in audio, and others that cost a small fortune. I wanted to find out where the point that cables performance became a diminishing return because I assumed there would be one. I tried all kinds of relative value things like taking a BAT system with a $10k preamp, $18k amps, $6k cd, $22k speakers. Everything performed beyond it's price tag. The cables that are the best I've ever found going through about $400k worth of everything under the sun are the best value in stupidly high end audio, but at $2500 they are better than anything out into the $10k range. the whole line from high, mid, and entry matched others way beyond in price. Changing from the good cable down to mid level the price differential is only a few thousand dollars but you felt like the system was changed to components costing $30k less, the speakers which are glorious Meadowlark Nightingales that are as good as $80k Wislon Audio sounded like I'd dropped to $3000 speakers. Dropping to the entry which was actually competitive with $1000 I/C's for $129 and the system exhibited none of the massive audiophile presence and staggering detail and the right there in your face live feeling. So a few grand kills $60k worth of equipment as seen from that angle. Now I take the other way, nice entry grade performance equipment that matches to higher priced gear. Rega Planet, Belles 150, belles 21-A preamp, Meadowlark Heron speakers, a few grand in modest but excellent equipment. As I work up in cable grade the mid that was $300 for I/C's but would outperform most $1500 cable made the low grade in the big gun system sound less clear and detailed, the subtle things were not in the big system that the entry was starting to catch. The $800 I/C's in the entry trashed the big system with entry and the mids didn't have as much closeness and presence but the detail was starting to come through but didn't match the entry with cable that compares to anything on the market.

Questions about how much to spend on cable don't compute because the value with improvement to cost is so far beyond equipment gains it's like it takes $100 to get the gain over a grand in equipment does and it gets worse when the equipment is five to ten grand a component. A few hundred gives a better improvement than ten grand if wire hasn't been addressed much. Starting with the basic decent system I was talking about and entry grade wire you could make all wire upgrades until you were at a high level at which time your equipment upgrades will start giving up much higher levels of performance because you will hear it because the cable is capable of passing higher levels of detail. I started out a customer with the degree of equipment he wanted and educated them to several grades of wire so they knew where improvements were best made. I am writing a book on system synergy because this subject is the most bull filled in existence. I go through the logic in a manner that even Trelja could understand if he could consider for a short period that there is someone who tried $400k worth of wire in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and that he may be mistaken about cables over $250 that he has never tried. I'm not sure how guys that find the magic $250 cable come to the conclusion that there couldn't be a better cable. The fact is that as good as they thought that cable is there are many more jumps up from there and they are just as amazing every time you make that improvement.

I cover things like which cables make the most difference and explain why so you can better understand why it's possible to make an upgrade that you won't hear much difference until you improve other things first. Another great thing to know is what happens when you upgrade speaker cable before interconnects.

Starting with a basic system upgrading components looking for great sound is only giving up a fraction of the quality the better equipment is capable of. Cable is a mind blower every time you jump up in quality, then equipment upgrades start delivering detail and presence that makes it worth doing.

There have been some very good responses to your inquiry but they weren't the ones that thought the idea of low limits being as good as it gets. Good quality sound is determined by the wire. Look at entry cable as cutting off 30% of the quality, higher grade lets you hear more, and every cable upgrade lets just a bit more. Yes there is a reasonable cutoff point but it really has more to do with how much you want in your system, picking a point to quit with wire doesn't make sense until the money spent on a new equipment upgrade will not make the difference wire will. If wire would still make an improvent that is just being wasted on new equipment.

An example of an opinion that means nothing is the guy who says that the best budget cable is Transparent, how many has he tried? It has to be the $129 JPS which will beat the $1500 Transparent, the $300 JPS beats Transparent out to $4000, and the $800 JPS beats the most expensive Transparent. I have had all these cables in systems and I had thousands of dollars worth of Transparent I used to show people the value differences out there.

I've got an interesting thing for you to think about, what cable connection between components makes the most sense to put the best grade cable in including the speaker cable? If you follow the signal path from the cd player the one from there to the preamp is the weakest and most delicate, it needs to be boosted in a refined way so as to be a more robust level for the amp. If the cable loses minute detail because it isn't as good that detail will be gone from the system. Preserve that signal in the highest form possible to the preamp and you can drop to a lower grade cable from the preamp to amp and the detail that was fragile has been boosted so it passes through lesser cable without detail disappearing. I've used a trick of putting best in the first spot and medium grade in the next. It makes a huge difference from the other way where you have lost important ambient information, it doesn't have the dynamic energy.
In a budget allocation scenario the lower the budget the higher ratio I'll spend on cable, cheaper electronics fed with a better signal does better than if you dropped the cable cost back to nothing and put that money into a better component. The better component with cheap wire won't sound as good as the cheaper one that had more detail and depth.

There are only a few people who hit on the common sense behind this question and thread. If you are looking at spending several thousand or whatever on a new component and you try the component in mind and can find a new wire you heard about that is the same or less your only choice is to decide which makes the best or biggest difference. Cable makes a huge difference up to the point where you are close to optimal. Some of the best cables are not the most expensive. Some of the most expensive are far from neutral which confuses the issue when you throw coloration into the equation. Use your common sense in terms of letting your ability to hear changes or differences determine how much you spend. A budget component system with superb but pricey wire can outperform a system costing tens of thousands of dollars more that had medium priced mediocre wire.

I wouldn't even worry about power cords except to put a decent budget upgrade on until you have brought the interconnects and speaker wire to a highly improved state

Elizabeth and Mitch2

I don't believe it makes sense or you can put a price relative to the system. There's too big a gap between performance and price, meaning the "best" cables cost a fraction of what the most expensive cables cost.

To Mitch2, as a dealer I did the comparison work between entry level equipment and the upgrade path that gives the best bang for the buck. Working from a starting point equipment upgrades will never make the bang for the buck improvements wire will. You simply do not hear the full potential of what better equipment does until the wire is at a refined state. It's as simple as the fact that you are wasting a lot of money when equipment is focused on before wire. Not only that but with inferior wire your comparison choices on equipment will be altered because of the coloration the wire imparts to the system. Neutrality is the key and there are $150 interconnects that are as neutral as the very best neutral ones are, they just reveal a little less detail.

My common sense proof of when you are done with wire comes when the given cost of a wire upgrade that makes a discernable difference is still under what a better component can do that costs more. Wire comes first then equipment upgrades.

Now that said you have to weed through the plethora of cable to get the best, because the best interconnect I know of that outperforms those costing thousands is a modest $800. There are dozens of $800 cables that mid performers so that is where the rift is between price versus performance. As a dealer I consulted on many mega buck systems that weren't doing what they should even though they had tens of thousands in wire. My wire recommendations that "fixed" the problems were way cheaper than what the person already had.

I'm writing a book on system synergy that explains in a common sense manner what the weak links of a system are and why. The common sense approach allows audiophiles to have a way better understanding of the role wire takes in a system, and which wire is the most important to have the best in.

As a dealer I had obvious advantages in terms of trying a vast array of equipment and cable, manufacturers would send me their complete arrays from entry to flagship with enough to do a whole system. The painful part was breaking cable in to be able to tell what it could do. I also had complete lines of BAT, Belles, AR, and Electrocompaniet, so I could do an entry or ultimate level system and run a gamut of entry to best cable. I used to go into affluent customer's homes where I saw systems well beyond $100k as a rule, they were not happy with what they were getting out of these systems. Wire was the fix, and generally my recommendations would cost them a fourth of what they had already spent on wire. There were times I spent over 8 hours doing A/B comparison work, but it was improvements we heard. Knowing the order to replace wire in is everything, if you start with power cords you won't hear nearly as much improvement as you would if you upgrade I/C's and speaker wire first.

How much you spend has nothing to do with what you are getting or how well it works in a system, many $10k speaker cables will make your ears bleed, especially if you have edgy interconnects on the front end to preamp link. Modest but excellent value components with twice as much spent on cables and power cords will embarrass guys with $40k systems that have lame wire. Once someone was sold on a $1500 amp we would spend two or three hours deciding what power cord they wanted with it. It blew my wife away that half the people buying a $1500 Belles would get a $1500 Kaptivator with it (although I'd give them a great price on a power cord with their amp purchase). In a well sorted out system my favorite $3500 power cords are magic, the kind of difference anyone with ears can easily hear. The equation I used to present was to compare the difference a high end component makes in a good system to the difference a $1500 to $3500 power cord makes, the $10k component makes a fraction of the difference the cord does at way less money. I want to point out that there are a lot of good budget power cords out there that give up 85% of what you get spending thousands, and that's not to say those who can afford it shouldn't get the best.

And that folks is the answer to how much to spend, judge the cost and improvement derived from cable against the difference an upgrade to components or speakers makes. Until you are out at the point of diminishing performance you are not done. Even modest equipment leaves huge untapped performance gains on the table without good wire. Too many audiophiles have figured out how to get their systems to where they can hear substantial differences to worry about those who think cables and power cords are snake oil. There are those who think it's ridiculous to spend anything more than a few hundred bucks on wire, I think it's ludicrous to spend tens of thousands on components and speakers and not focus on excellent wire.

Here's a bit of humor for you, I've noticed a very accurate correlation between those who are vehemently opposed to spending bigger amounts on wire and their political persuasion. Show me a judgmental person who has made up their mind wire is snake oil and it's a 95% chance they are republicans. Now that right there is funny.

This was an Aerospace engineer as he liked to call himself, he was an electrical engineer for a local defense contractor that makes rocket and propulsion systems for weapons. He wouldn't put more than $150 into interconnects in his $40k system because he had measured the "differences" between lamp cord and interconnects and couldn't measure any difference....I'm thinking okay, here we go.

I was a dealer for Meadowlark and this guy came to me wanting $12k speakers even though he had very respectable ones that cost almost ten grand. My position was that if he wasn't happy with the speakers he had he had other issues like wire, and here was where he was off to the races about how he was an electrical engineer and wire doesn't make a bit of difference. We ended up where he was challenging me to prove wire makes a difference, so I said we'd do it in his system. He had several audiophile friends who were going to be there for extra ears to evaluate differences. Also I brought the speakers because I wanted to make the point that if we popped new speakers in his existing system it was not going to make the difference he was looking for. The first order of listening was to hook the speakers up and a/b compare them, yes they were better but not what I'd call profoundly. I also popped $1500 power cords on his existing system knowing it would make some difference, but not to the degree of being worth $3000. He of course was crowing about how he was right about power cords, I said yeah wait until we have your system right then we'll see.

Going back to his speakers and listening to wire we started with my favorite interconnect position, which is the source to preamp, and I had an $800 one that outperformed all the usual suspect's flagship models costing thousands more, it was neutral yet as transparent as anything on the market. In spite of the difference being truly staggering he refused to acknowledge any difference. All the other guys and me were laughing and cutting jokes like perhaps he needed to spend a grand on a hearing aid before wasting any money on audio gear when he couldn't tell the difference anyway. He got really funny when he insisted on watching what I was changing because he thought I had to be doing something else to alter the results of switching the cable, this guy was seriously entertaining and had us laughing pretty much the whole time.

So after changing i/c's and going to a good bi-wire cable that was $1100 everyone was pretty blown away by the difference less than $2500 in cable made, and it was agreed that it was a way bigger difference than just upgrading speakers. I'm grinning like a cheshire cat and I say, now let's hear some power cords. The $1500 cords I was selling generally got comments to the effect that those cords on an amp made the biggest single difference customers had ever heard any one thing make That day made the point for four audiophiles that a change done in the wrong order makes almost no difference, but make it in the right order and it can be profound.

I always hate to hear of guys soured by listening experiences where they have heard little to no worthwhile change, it easily happens.

This was an Aerospace engineer as he liked to call himself, he was an electrical engineer for a local defense contractor that makes rocket and propulsion systems for weapons. He wouldn't put more than $150 into interconnects in his $40k system because he had measured the "differences" between lamp cord and interconnects and couldn't measure any difference....I'm thinking okay, here we go.

I was a dealer for Meadowlark and this guy came to me wanting $12k speakers even though he had very respectable ones that cost almost ten grand. My position was that if he wasn't happy with the speakers he had he had other issues like wire, and here was where he was off to the races about how he was an electrical engineer and wire doesn't make a bit of difference. We ended up where he was challenging me to prove wire makes a difference, so I said we'd do it in his system. He had several audiophile friends who were going to be there for extra ears to evaluate differences. Also I brought the speakers because I wanted to make the point that if we popped new speakers in his existing system it was not going to make the difference he was looking for. The first order of listening was to hook the speakers up and a/b compare them, yes they were better but not what I'd call profoundly. I also popped $1500 power cords on his existing system knowing it would make some difference, but not to the degree of being worth $3000. He of course was crowing about how he was right about power cords, I said yeah wait until we have your system right then we'll see.

Going back to his speakers and listening to wire we started with my favorite interconnect position, which is the source to preamp, and I had an $800 one that outperformed all the usual suspect's flagship models costing thousands more, it was neutral yet as transparent as anything on the market. In spite of the difference being truly staggering he refused to acknowledge any difference. All the other guys and me were laughing and cutting jokes like perhaps he needed to spend a grand on a hearing aid before wasting any money on audio gear when he couldn't tell the difference anyway. He got really funny when he insisted on watching what I was changing because he thought I had to be doing something else to alter the results of switching the cable, this guy was seriously entertaining and had us laughing pretty much the whole time.

So after changing i/c's and going to a good bi-wire cable that was $1100 everyone was pretty blown away by the difference less than $2500 in cable made, and it was agreed that it was a way bigger difference than just upgrading speakers. I'm grinning like a cheshire cat and I say, now let's hear some power cords. The $1500 cords I was selling generally got comments to the effect that those cords on an amp made the biggest single difference customers had ever heard any one thing make That day made the point for four audiophiles that a change done in the wrong order makes almost no difference, but make it in the right order and it can be profound.

I always hate to hear of guys soured by listening
experiences where they have heard little to no worthwhile change, it easily happens.