I used to think pricey interconnects were snake oil...

Once you have a compatible set of components that sound great together, speaker wire, interconnects and powercords can make a very significant improvement in sound quality. The better your system, in general, the bigger the improvement you are likely to experience. But also, experience developing listening skills will reveal aspects to sound quality you will unlikely have even noticed when you started out.

One truth that has shown itself to me over and over again is that there are lots of good sounding systems, but all the truly great sounding systems have been meticulously tweaked through wires, vibration control, and room treatments in order to get their sound.

While the is no real wrong way. Most of us do components, wires, then room treatments. 

One of my early jaw dropping experiences in audio were with digital cables. I had already learned how important they were to optimize the analog components. Around 1990 I had a two box CD player. I happily thought, finally a cable that will not matter, it’s digital. But I am a scientist and it comes out, I wanted to prove to myself it didn’t matter. So I borrowed a decent quality digital interconnect. I remember the feeling of complete embarrassment as the first few notes were played… it sounded like someone had come in and upgraded both component boxes with much higher level ones. I was just speechless. Also, what a screaming deal it was… while expensive… nothing like it would have cost to upgrade the player and DAC. 
 

Some components are highly dependent, some less so. Good quality equipment require carefully chosen interconnects to get the best out of them 

@roadcykler “…things people believe… You can’t prove things with facts or objectivity so you have to have faith.“

I believe Audiophilia is more like a science, careful and systematic observation reveals important nuanced real world changes in sound quality produced by different components, and venues. Very little is taken on faith. It is not that science cannot explain these things, it is that there are so many variable… hundreds operating at once that science is not a useful way to a simply explain performance.

Consider five components, each made up with hundreds of parts with different materials, connected by wires with dozens if different variables, gauge, material, dielectric. This is not a situation that lends itself to say some five variables will explain the output, sound… and even if it did, the sound you get out highly depends on the speaker and room acoustics. I was a practicing scientist for over ten years… anything more than a few variables and simple prediction models become difficult… hundreds, useless. Look at the horsepower thrown at weather prediction. We don’t have supercomputers and dozens of measurement devices at labs developing electronics and in our homes to work out what effect a new preamp might have.

If that is not complicated enough, then you have folks with different listening skills and values in what they want to hear.

Then there is music… it is not a single test tone… but dozens of different tones… all varying in loudness and frequency over time and with harmonics effecting the sound in higher and lower frequencies.

Instead of all that, electronic designers listen to different designs and components to tune their products to perform a certain way. Audiophiles develop listening skills, developed and use a common terminology to describe sound quality in musical reproduction (see Robert Harley’s book, The Complete Guide to High End Audio), and we have professional reviewers review the sound of components and audiophiles on forums try to communicate general attributes of different components and how they might operate in each others systems.

In addition experienced folks try to coach those new to high end audio the ways of the Force… I mean audio.

@asctim ”…My experience has been that I can get various very inexpensive interconnects that all sound indistinguishable.”

Yeah… of course, very inexpensive interconnects don’t make a difference or make a negative difference. No effort has been put into design, material choice, cost of materials… just like you can’t expect high quality sound out of a $19 CD Player. 
 

There is little point in reviewing inexpensive interconnects because they typically sound the same as the freebies you get with inexpensive components. Just to make sure I was calibrated to the market I have tried, Monster, Blue Jeans, Belkin… and a few others… completely worthless.

You need to audition some more than , Cardas, WireWorld, Transparent, and DHLabs. This will give you some perspective.

@bolong 

Your uninformed, unsubstantiated opinions are of no value to those of that know better and to those that come here to learn. Please try to refrain.

There was a couple threads on the fake Nordost offered on Aliexpress. I had a real set of Nordost Odin 2 in my system for several weeks… so I know what they sound like. So I bought a set of Nordost Odin2 from AliExpress. I can assure you, they did not sound anything like the real Nordost Odin 2. 
 

So, then comes the question… do they sound better than Blue Jeans or some low level interconnect. Honestly, I have better things to do. But, to me buying fake interconnects should not be one’s default. I would rather buy a low end Cardas… and know what I am getting, versus a fake Cardas… which is most likely to be inferior… with a small possibility of it sounding better. I would really rather live in a world where people get paid for the effort and quality of materials put into their products.