Yes, cables do make a difference -- regardless of price...

You cannot buy a 1000 bucks cable for a 1000 bucks system value...it will be non sensical waste... 😁

Calling a 1000 bucks system value if not trash, low-fi gear, based on price tag is complete ignorance of acoustics and more...

We all have budget and needs anyway , different one, then bashing someone because he value low cost cable is not to my taste ....Even if some cable which are costlier one can make a difference in a costlier system...

My system value is near 1000 bucks , some of my cable are chinese one some from Morrow audio. And my system is high-fi and audiophile as much in his relative way than a 100,000 bucks one is if well embedded to begin with ... System-room -brain Acoustics dont change his laws only because of price tags...

And i am not a troll from ASR by the way....Audio is neither subjective nor objective as psychoacoustics is neither one but correlation of the two in one experience... But Consumerism faith is subjective conditioning only, as Pavolvian dogs reacting to bells or publicity are...

I trust myself only my acoustic experience experiments ( not my purchase nor my upgrade price tags) .

There are good cable synergetical with a system at low price or at high price, chinese or not... No rules here...Only experiments and basic knowledge in electrical,mechanical and acoustical embeddings and common sense...

I dont need an upgrade at high cost now, cables or gear...

I am not deaf nor gullible ...

Did you find the Al used in the connector, inside the conductor or both?  Did you actually cut the insulator apart and look inside the conductors?  Are the conductor mixed with separated Cu stains and Al strains?  If so, I agree you could easily tell by using magnet.  But, if the strain is made of Al and plated with Cu, how do you tell?  This is a huge accusation and you need to be cautious with the statement you made. 

@stereo_buff ... I should also mention that much of the wire available now (especially from China) is not pure copper (Cu), but a mix of copper and aluminum (Cu/Al), due to cost, and it's performance is not as good as pure copper wire.

I have made 2-3 purchases from AliExpress, and I find the build and sonic quality, like the one shown below, quite good. The Orgami cable from another batch seems genuine with the label on it.

For the record, I am in no need of rationalisms masquerading as a public service.

Let me elaborate.

As many here know, I have been at this hobby for 55 years, since I built my Dynakit Stereo 70 when I was 14.

Since then, I have had the opportunity to go through over a dozen brand name cables, some costing thousands of dollars. Imho, they do not justify the fetishistic faith placed in them, and certainly do not come close to justifying the amount of $$$$$s charged for them. It is at best a subjective experience.

See the link below for a description of my system. Notice nowhere do I mention the inexpensive - at best what you might call entry level - cables.

Now please leave the cable agnostics alone! If you want to break your piggy bank on this stuff and have your wife tear you a second one when she finds out, be my guest. I won’t stop you.

“Peace”.

theaudioatticvinylsundays.com/about

@stereo_buff

Thank you for that. There’s at least some science in there, and it’s science I can understand and choose to agree or disagree with. It neither confirms nor disproves my view: it can make a difference, but is it an improvement and most importantly is it an improvement sufficiently worth mortgaging the house over? My engineer says at best, a 1% difference, and the difference can simply be … different but one of taste, not necessarily an improvement.

I have a question for you:

- my amps have no output transformer

- my speakers are 16 ohm, not 8 or 4, with 101db efficiency.

So….?

And here is a question that I asked in another post that no one has touched:

- So let’s say you got a thick, heavy speaker cable at $300 a foot. You hook it up to the cabinet terminals but from there, smaller, cheaper wires lead to the crossover, from there smaller wires go to the driver terminals, and from there really skinny stranded wires go from the driver terminals to the spider.

Ummmm…?

Thank you.