A true believer

Are you now handing out seals of approval?

There is a great analogy to this statement; "Using better components or keeping said components and improving them with wires or other tweaks".

You can find numerous other hobbies where people are willing to spend tons of money on an older product or upgrade to another product altogether. In the Corvette automobile racing or street mods world where I dwell quite often, you will see people adding cams, blowers, every fiberglass bolt on known to man and listed in Mid America Corvette catalog. Some of these mods have real benefits for the normal driver, others, well a radical and lopey cam for the street, or C6R racing wing for high speed track use, do not. But, the owners choose to mod their car and tweak it to suit their own personal taste and desires, regardless of the age of the car. I have seen people buy newer corvettes to get the latest and greatest version of Corvette, the ZR1 and Z06 are great performers in the segment in which they compete, and others, who decide that their older version modded to the hilt are what is best for them. In our Corvette club, some members do race, including myself. Some like to mod and show off, and others prefer stock. As you can guess, people who mod are putting money into their car and most do not care about the majority of the populace being overly concerned about their decision, or how much money they threw away and will not get back if they decide to sell or race their Corvette.
So, if someone chooses to mod the heck out of their system with cables, tubes, fuses, or whatever, and throw money at their system for their own pleasure, I think that is great on them. Yeah, you might still come across systems where you might ask yourself, "what is that mod all about or that mod does what", but you should appreciate the fact that someone else is willing to explore and try unknown and unlikely combinations for the rest of us to see and or hear about.

I am still trying to figure out how to hook up $20,000 cables to a $99 all in one music box. I think the all in one has some "exotic" connectors and the cables will need to be sliced and diced to fit correctly, yeah, that's it.
Ciao,
Audioquest4life

Onhwy61,
Yes, I don't like yours. I like mine better, I made better choices, you should have bought what I bought. But, since your signature indicates a liking of Bob Dylan, I'll give you a seal of approval just the same.

Who cares ? It is the monies of this particular individual (as it is with all of us), and he/she can spend it any way he or she chooses. And if this individual hears and appreciates it all, so be it. That's high end audio for ya ! FYI, one of my "secondary" systems is based around a very clean and functioning NAD 3020 amp, and the amp is the least expensive part of the system. Now I know I can upgrade the amp ( and actually have other amps, amp/pre amps around I can use ), but instead I have opted to upgrade other parts of the system. So what ! Just my two cents....Thank you

If you sent 3 people into an audio shop with a selection of equipment and asked them to put a system together, I would put my money on none of them ending up with the same system. Cables are the same. And they are all right of course, assuming that you are looking at it from their point of view.