Should I Spend That Much on Exotic Audio Cables!?

We seem to get more emails about cables than virtually any other topic in audio. A particular email caught our attention when one of our readers was concerned about spending as much money on interconnects as their AV processor.  These type of situations may sound absurd to the uninitiated but sales and marketing are very powerful tools often used to dupe consumers into parting with their hard earned cash in any field whether it's for some promised miracle cure or fix to allegedly improve the sonics of your hi-fi system. 

Check out our YouTube video discussions below on this very topic.

 Audio Interconnect & Cable Myths Revealed

Q: Hi - I currently have Martin Logan XT Series surround sound speaker setup (11.1) and just ordered the Anthem AVM 60 pre/pro and their matching MCA amps.  I need about 10ft of XLR cables for this setup. I was looking at Audioquest Carbons and Tributaries Series 8, but getting 11 cables cost as much as the Anthem Receiver. Do you recommend any type of XLR Balanced Cables with a 10 foot run?

A:  Sounds like you've got some nice equipment there. We don't recommend wasting your money on snake oil cables unless your sole purpose is to dress up your system aesthetically. Even then, realize that most of your cables will be behind your equipment and out of visible sight.  Most exotic cables are nothing more than audio jewelry in a fancy package wrapped in hyperbole. This is especially true of companies that promise some sort of audio magic by slapping a battery on the dielectric or soaking them in Kosher chicken fat blessed by a Rabi. In fact, many of them measure no better, and often worse, than the inexpensive generic stuff. 

When choosing interconnects and speaker cables, we seek out brands that don't promote pseudoscience and instead embrace provable engineering principles.  The truth is it doesn't take a lot to make quality cables and we have numerous articles on our site that define what makes a quality cable.  Cables should only represent a very small percentage (5% or less) of total system budget so if you spent $10k on your equipment, don't spend more than $500 for the interconnects and speaker cables.

If your looking for inexpensive, quality brands to buy from, check out cables from Bluejeans Cable or Monoprice to name a couple.  You can then put the money you saved into adding a 2nd subwoofer to improve the bass across all your seats or better optimize your room acoustics.  There are so many other areas to spend money on that can yield much better sonic returns than cables.