Speaker Cables? why all the hype for expensive speaker wire?

@lloydc I have been a beta tester of GroverHuffman.com cables for 20 years.  His speaker cables have evolved at a slower pace with about four or five iterations in 20+ years.  His Empress speaker cables are excellent and his Pharoah speaker cables are superb.  Both are affordably priced and can be made bi-wired.  Such great cables at such reasonable prices. 

Hello,so I hadn’t planned on chiming in until I read a comment on the second page about Audioquest type 4 speaker wire.All I can say is 7or 8 years ago ago I owned 5 ten ft. runs of it for a surround system. It worked wonderful for movies and tv,was reasonably priced, 150.00 a pc for 10 ft.run. I had a decent two channel set up in a separate room for music. That system was Parasound JC1 monos,BAT VK 52 pre,Dynaudio Confidence speakers, and Nordost Valhalla speaker cables,2 m. For kicks and giggles a friend and I switched out just speaker cable to hear the difference. First we tried the Audioquest type 4. I was completely amazed at how lifeless and terrible sounding it became. I knew the Nordost was better cable. I just wasn’t expecting such a huge,terrible sounding difference. I also had a set of Nordost Baldur speaker speaker cable we tried next. This was so much better than the AQ, and not that much more expensive. So this was my experience,with those components in the system. If your using Audioquest type 4 and happy, just don’t ever try a better speaker cable. You will hear an improvement. If you can’t,there’s an issue with your hearing or something. Sorry to burst your bubble,but you probably won’t hear it pop! Good day,John

Named after the economist who first studied it, Thorstein Vleben, The Vleben Effect is the phenomenon that higher prices effects create a higher perceived quality.  There is an entire industry of designer products offering consumers the comfort garnered from this perception.  Designer branded products are thr perfect example.  For me, the name McIntosh has continued to personifie this effect longer than any other audio company.   If their prices were lowered to coincide with manufacturing costs, people would not think it is as good, and buy something more expensive.  How much does anyone really think wire costs to make, and/or, stamp with your name?

Whoops, I included one too many words in the edit  Omit "effects" after "prices".

danvigna,
Why on earth would you use McIntosh as an example? Their products are SO much cheaper than other brands like Soulution and Dartzeel.