XLR cables for high-end multichannel system

Mogami Gold XLR would run in average $100/pr are very hard to beat. With slight improvement going with AudioQuest or Kimber, you'll spend thousands of dollars more. Used wires might be the best bet, but still at the higher price point than Mogami.

Djruss,

Weather Mogami is upgrade/downgrade or not to Blue Jeans or any other higher or lower priced cables, it's today's studio quality standard and it's probably the wires that had been used to make a good quality recordings.

If you're listening to the multi-ch music, 4tc is already great for surrounds. If you only using them for movies, than Kimber 4TC is too good and too expensive where probably zip cord would do the same job. Surround wires have substantially less impact on performance than mains and if you want to downgrade or save money, surround wires is the #1 contender.

Wires such as Siltech, Shunyata, Harmonic Tech and even higher priced Kimber have lots of unauthorized copies that are being sold to naive public and the more expensive wire you want to get, the more probability of getting an unauthorized copy. Go to alibaba, dhgate or similar sites and you'll see them tons for small fraction of the retail price and than after purchase by reseller, they go for "lightly used" sale.

Wires in general at ANY price point can or can't be an upgrade and choosing the right ones that synergise with your system is substantially MORE important than spending more $$$ or more $$$$. Looking at parameters of wires such as per-unit reactance(inductive and capacitive impedance) and resistance at minimal point defines the the most newtral cable. Other than that you can also match wire to the input/output of your components or speakers.

Browse through Al's posts on properly selecting cables and you'll be surprised how much money you can save on cabling. You may end-up purchasing pro-grade speaker wires because they match perfectly your system.