Cables that make no sense...

Any cable which costs more (or equivalent to) the cost of the main components. I have seen postings with people asking for details on cables which cost as much as their amps or speakers. Whilst cables do make a big difference I think that they should take a smaller share of the money, say no more than 10% of the entire system cost. This is just my opinion and I'd welcome any feedback from anyone who thinks I have got this balance seriously wrong.

Personally I make all of my own ICs. It's not difficult, and in my experience it has given substantially better sound, at substantial savings compared to going with the cable manufacturers. I haven't yet used this route for speaker cables, but I'm very tempted.

Perhaps you misunderstood me. I would never state that cables do not make a difference when I have clearly heard that they make a major difference.

However I have found that their difference only justifies about 10% of the system cost being spent on cables. So if you have a 100k system then spend 10k on cables (I have no experience at this stratospheric price point), but if you have a $3k system (like mine) then spend about $300 on cables. Putting a $1k cable in a $3k system will not make a $1k difference, but putting a $100 cable in a $3k system could well make a $100 difference.

See what I'm saying ? What I really wanted to know was whether people think my 10% figure is about right, or too high or too low.