What say you?

For as long as I've been in this hobby, it was always understood that dealers made the biggest gains from markup on cables and ancillaries. One need not spend a fortune on cables to get great results. Careful trial and error will get you there and rarely does one hit the nail on the head on the first try.

The longer you're in this hobby, the more you're going to spend on cabling as you carefully and judiciously upgrade. Add up all you've spent over time and it'll add up to more than what you've currently settled on. Throw out the learning curve and just get comfortable with that fact. Stop with the sour grapes routines.

Keep your cables in good shape and sell them for a loss when you upgrade if you must but keep in mind the old saw that you can pay me now, or pay me later, with the later payment being the dearest.

Also, if possible, keep the older, better performing cables around for comparisons sake when you get new gear. It's very helpful to go back and reaffirm what you think you know about your current cables. Doing this also helps to narrow down what works best for you.

All the best,
Nonoise

@jetter + 1

My thinking is the same as a few others here:  Everything depends upon your budget and balancing the quality of various components and cables.  A $2,000 cable might sound better than a cheaper cable (one would hope!), but it makes no sense to use it in a system that is $10,000 max.  You get more bang-for-buck balancing money spent on each part of your system than maxing out on any one thing.  

And then there is your listening room — mine is definitely not ideal but it is what I have and I’m not moving.  I will likely look into getting dedicated ac lines from the breaker box to my listening room, and room treatments at some point, but I’m sure the benefit will be limited by the room and my budget for equipment. I make my peace with that — I have to.  I have too many other things to spend money on to blow the load on a sound system.  Others don’t have such limitations. Good for them. 

Amazing posts, and not in a good way. Who decides or who comes up with a the magic formula of value/percentage of cable costs to determine if somebody overspent? 
It’s crazy for MC to spend $10k on cables for the caliber of his system, but it’s not crazy to spend $30k on cables for somebody that has a hifi system with quality products worth say $200k. It’s absurd for anyone to say if you spend more than $3 a foot, you are a fool. To these people, either get a set of new ears or a quality system that allows you to hear better components.

The comment on overspending on cables, can’t you say the same thing about over spending on an amp? Speakers? Dac? Cartridge? If somebody has a $2000 system, it would be crazy to spend $10k on a dac, but it would also be crazy to spend $1k on a dac in a $200k system.

let your ears be the judge not some fictitious value/formula

Let me get this straight. It is crazy for me to spend $10k on cables "for the caliber" of my system. Which is a fictitious value/formula. But it's not crazy to spend $30k on their $200k system. Which is a fictitious value/formula. 

Amazing post, and not in a good way.

R. Daneel Olivaw