Believe it or not you can buy speaker cables for the same amount as a brand new automobile. How about 2 brand new cars? Not enough? OK. You can spend enough on speaker cables to purchase 3 brand new vehicles. *
Indeed, you can purchase a lovely 10 foot pair of speaker cables for the princely sum of $46,000. (US)
The Sultan of Brunei would gag.
You can invest about $45.00 on an electrical equivalent 10 foot pair including much better connectors. You won’t hear any difference. Here’s another example of eye watering pricing: You can spend $22,500 on a one meter pair of interconnects. Just the thing for the idiot who purchases a 10 million dollar Renoir and uses it as a drinks tray.
You can purchase an electrical equivalent one meter pair of interconnects for about $4. You won’t hear any difference. Here’s another doozy. You can spend $17,000 on an A.C. power cord. Audio Precision is the industry standard for distortion measurement in audio. The APx555 is a distortion analyzer capable of ferreting out numbers approaching-124 dB. The A.C power cord used on this $30,000 device is about $8. Your electronics and speakers are dumb. They simply don’t care about the amount spent, or the colour, or the fancy stripes and spots. All they care about is the electrical parameters. And that’s all that you should be concerned with.
You could quite conceivably cobble together some cables from coat hangers, bicycle chains and steel wool. As long as the required values of inductance (L) capacitance (C) and resistance (R) are satisfied you won’t hear any difference. If you’ve purchased green felt tip pens by the crate or, if you’ve suspended your gluten free cables on neatly stacked pylons of Fig Newtons or, if you store your cables overnight between the ice cube tray and the frozen peas, please stop. You’ve been snookered. A good rummage behind the sofa cushions and the return of the empties piled in the garage should just about cover the expense of all the wire required for your audio system.
The ultimate money spinner must surely be a cable featuring a 5 year warranty with a 61 month break in time.
* A brand new Toyota Yaris will set you back a little over $15,000.