Best wires for cost

If you are willing to make your own cables, this one may be the best sound for the buck (by a wide margin). Procure some belden 1701A cat5 data cable (this is their best cat5 : pure teflon dielectric, perfect bonded coductor pairs, extremely consistent capacitance for any length). Take apart the outer jacket exposing the inner teflon bonded conuctors. Configure eight bonded pairs (two full original 1701A cables worth), tightly heat shrink all 8 pairs in Canare shrink tubing, then strip each bonded wire's insulator, connect the solid color wires together for positive , the banded color coductors for negative. Amazingly, this works just as well for both speaker and interconnect cables. ( For the final touch, you can also psuedo chryo freeze the cables with dry ice in a sealed styrofoam container, placed overnight in your freezer. This adds a bit of smoothness to their overall sound..i.e., more analog sounding) The sound of this cable has beat the following cables in comparison tests: Transparent,Music meter, Wire world, Monster's best and XLO. This is saying something since the overall construction cost is less than $3.00 per foot. (I should note that this design was a serious effort, that involved 18 audiophiles and 3 high end audio designers, over a two year period)

Just finished comparing the new Homegrown Audio Silver Lace against my Coincident CST IC's. Wow!!! I had thought that there was nothing better but I was wrong. The Silver Lace was significantly more transparent sounding. The CST did have marginally better bass reach but the difference wasn't significant. The Homegrown cables still aren't broken-in yet so I expect the bass to improve with time. I can't believe the Silver Lace only sells for $189. It's a bargain especially with free shipping and no sales tax.

Granite Audio #470 silver ic's are incredibly transparent and fast. They let the signal through. You can call Don and set up a trial and get a price. As good as the Harmonic tech pro silwayII was, I kept the granite, feeling it truer to the signal. Beware, it will not candy coat the incoming signal, but you will hear all the music.

Rackon- Tubes, Trejla, you should check out the Vantage interconects, they have many of the virtues of Coincident but they are just better, and cheaper too.