Not saying I'd spend $1600 but if I'm willing to spend say 2k on a component, why not on cables? Shouldnt they be considered a vital link in the chain?
Emil, I think in these two sentences you cut right to the heart of the question. At $200 a cable is an accessory purchase, but at $1600 it is a component and should be evaluated the same way that you would any other component, by asking A) Does it make my system sound better, B) Is the amount of sound improvement worth the amount of money you will have to pay for the new component (This is very subjective and your own opinion is the only one that matters here, because you can be sure that there will be all kinds of people who will want to tell you how they think you should spend your money.
) and finally C) What other options are there for a system upgrade with that amount of money and would any of them produce and even bigger SQ improvement over what you are now considering.
Steps A & B are pretty automatic for all of us,but especially with cables step C often gets overlooked. And that is OK if you are dealing with $200 cables , because putting that kind of money into hardware us unlikely to yield a significant increase and if there was say an amp that was significantly better than the one you have now that was only $200 more you probably would have bought that one in the first place. However the game changes significantly when the price of the cables begins to approach the price of the component they are connected to. Say you have a $200 amp connected with a $200 pair of ICs. Your total investment in this setup is $2200. If you are evaluating upgrading your IC to one of those $1600 IC the question now becomes would a $2000 amp with !1600 ICs sound better than a $3600 amp with $200 ICs. Hmmmm, that is a much different proposition. or taken even further, would my musical experience be enhanced more if I just left the amp and ICs as they are and sunk $1600 into a better DAC or Phono cartridge?The decision tree just becomes much more complicated, as it should for a purchase of that magnitude.
But back to your original question, I have upgraded cables several times over the years and got nice improvements each. Many years ago I pretty much standardized on MIT cables. When I first got my system I went trough and extensive period of trial and error testing and listened to pretty much every cable that Audio Visions carried (Steve and Nick were very patient about lending me cables and actually insisted that I do this) After extensive listening MIT was the best match to the equipment I have and over the years (and many later experiments) that has not really changed) Other people have varying opinions on MIT, but they just work for me, except for some reason between the TT and the phone input of the pre,where the run of Monster M-1000 bests the MITs, I don't know why and of course the power cables, which are all TWL). When I got the VT-200 amp the huge size of the chassis dictated that the amp had to come out of the rack and on the floor between the speakers. I needed a shorter run of Speaker cables and when I shopped around the used adds I spotted a 6 ft pair of MIT MH-750 Shotguns for $400 that was perfect for what I needed. My Thiels had always been connected with the standard MH-750 cables so I figure the shotgun would have the same house sound and they were the right length and reasonably priced so I went for it. Now if I remember correctly back in the late 80s when I originally bought my original speaker cables a 6 ft run of standard 750 cost in the area of $400 and the shotgun version was about $1200 (Don't quote me on the exact numbers, but I remember that it was a bit more than double. Now I did not seek out the shotguns for a SQ upgrade, I did it to meet the needs of a new physical configuration, but I was very pleasantly surprised with the amount of additional SQ they gave me. Would I have paid this $1200 for them back in 1988, I doubt it (and of course when the amp was in the rack on the side of the room I would have needed 15 ft runs of shotgun which would have come close to $2000 in price). I have also twice moved up within the MIT line, one because I got cables on a clearance sale when MIT and Transparent dissolved their US Distribution and Audio Advisor was blowing out $600 cables for $99 and the other when I needed a 15 ft IC to feed the VT-200 on the floor and just found a great deal on ebay.) Both times I could definitely hear the difference in the "Better" cables.
But I also have to warn you that better is not always better, even with the same cable. When I got those MIT Clearance cables I quickly ran over to the home of another AudioSyndrome member, telling him "you have to listen to these right away. They sound great and the clearance stock will not last long. We plugged them into his system and not only did they not sound great, they sounded awful.Never mind not buying them as an upgrade, I would not have put them in that system if somebody gave then to me for free. And I found out about them from another friend who bought some abd brought them over to my house. In our two system they sounded Great (and are still in place in both systems today), But at Jim's house, YUCK. Cables are very finicky. In my peersonal experience just because they are expensive doesn't mean that they are good and just because they are good in one system does not mean that they will be good in another. (or even in two different spots in the same system as with my phono stage.)
So in answer to your original question, more expensive cables can, and often do sound better, but not always.
And just for the record, in today's market $1600 hardly qualifies as super expensive cables. Even though I would agree that $1600 of a big pile of cash to lay out for 3 feet of wire it is nowadays pretty much middle of the road in cable prices. Serach MIT Cables on Ebay and you will see ICs being sold
used for $7500. Now of course I don't foresee those cables getting shipped to either of our houses, but there are people out there who have a lot of money and are not afraid to spend it on stereo equipment. Hey to each his own (I for one really like those people, because their purchases are what feed the used market when something new comes out. I never would have gotten the deals I got on used expensive cables if somebody else hadn't first bought them new.
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