why do people feel the need to buy expensive cable

I just don't get it.  I don't understand why people get so worked up about pricing of components (cables) and--other thread--double-blind testing.

Cables measure differently.  A lot of people hear differences.  Scientific understanding of the physical universe and of electronics is far advanced, but it's not like it's reached complete, perfect, utter understanding.  Hawking was a milepost on the way...

For me, the much bigger issue is (a) whether different is always better, and (b) the cost-benefit ratio. Different cables will sound different, but the inherent bias is almost always to perceive difference as improvement.  This is what needs to be worked on.  Secondly, not, why are people willing to buy 5K interconnects, but how can we calibrate their improvement over the $50 i/c's, and not just to arrive at the familiar law of diminishing returns, but rather to question whether those $4950 could not be spent profitably elsewhere.

I've heard the argument, I've got my system where I want it, now I just want to squeeze the last 5% out of it, but perhaps we need to think of that 5K in terms of changing another component in the system rather than just optimizing the cables.  Perhaps a different pre-amp would give you 10%.

How you quantity those trade-offs is another question, best left for another day.

Hyperbole, hyperbole, hyperbole.

Sellers are at pains to magnify whatever differences/improvements their 1K product has over the standard 50-buck special.

Listeners are so excited when they actually hear any difference, whether it's genuinely an "improvement" or not, that they exaggerate the changes that they hear.

And so it spirals onward.

To do list.

1. Pick a price point.

2. Identify each and every cable at or below that point.

3. Acquire (buy, beg, borrow, steal) examples of each.

4. Perform extensive comparative listening tests.

5. Months later, exhausted, announce to the world your findings and ratings.

6. Explain why everyone else under the sun, including those who have heard some of those cables and many who have not, disagree completely with your findings.

7. Repeat.