The Ongoing Debate on the Benefits (and pricing) of High-End Audio Cables

Another commentary on High-End Audio Cables?

One of the constants in the ever-evolving world of high-end audio is the debate over the contribution of cables to the sonic picture.  Further contributing to this debate is their associated pricing. By cables, I am referring to speaker cables, interconnects, phono cables, power cords and the various types of cables that transmit digital signals such as ethernet or Toslink (I will be mostly referring to speaker cables in the spirit of simplicity). For the non-audio enthusiast, conventional wisdom would suggest that wires create a negligible to marginal contribution to sound quality.  Similarly, the non-audio enthusiast may have similar notions across the entire audio chain with the exception of loudspeakers.  Within the audiophile community, there are also waxing and waning levels of skepticism regarding the impact of cables, with many objecting to the exorbitant prices.  Anecdotally, most ultra high-end systems utilize expensive offerings from various cable manufacturers. It has been suggested that 15-20% of your system budget should be devoted to cables.  

These prices - are they for real?

Returning to the non-audio segment of the population (or stated differently, almost everyone extant), the prices of higher-end audio components is quite jolting.  I had a visitor to my room several years ago that was the CTO of a medium-sized health technology company.  When viewing my 275 lbs Focal Nova Utopia Be loudspeakers, he estimated that they probably cost $8,000.  When discontinued in 2007, these speakers retailed for $38,000 (I will immediately add that I purchased the speakers used in 2011 for a small fraction of the retail price, and partially funded the purchase with the sale of my Dynaudio Contour 30’s).  With respect to high-end cables, the prices are naturally even more alarming.  If you asked a non-audiophile to imagine a pair of speaker cables costing $30,000, they would likely believe that this is a one-of-a-kind product, accented with baguette diamonds and crocodile leather, and created upon request for an eccentric billionaire.  Scanning the 2024 product directory in The Absolute Sound magazine, it is revealed that there are 25(!) choices of speaker cables ranging from $30,000 to $106,700 (Siltech Royal Triple Crown for those that are interested).  We can advise our hypothetical non-audio friend that this price range is not unusual, and that the prospective non-eccentric non-billionaire audiophile has several choices at their disposal.    

Again, do cables make a difference?

Having discussed and debated cost, we have now landed on the question – do cables make a difference in sound?  In contrast to other components, we have no standardized or recognized objective measure for cable performance.  With speakers, we can measure their sensitivity, impedance, and the inertness of the enclosure.  There are similar types of measurable outputs for amplifiers and front-end components.  With cables, their sonic influence in a given system is entirely subjective.  Some of us can recall the now legendary article where it was reported that experienced audiophiles preferred the sound of lamp wire over audio cables in a blinded test.  There were a number of flaws in that report and describing them exceed the scope of this article. Furthermore, if I can speak in general terms, many or most electrical engineers will dismiss the notion that cables can improve or make any material difference in sound quality.  However, for those that have compared the sound of cables in a controlled environment, my belief is that most will tell you that there is indeed a difference, and that difference is not small.

I have personally upgraded my speaker cables seven times over a period of 25 years.  I approach cable changes with conservative expectations, and those expectations are exceeded every time.  On occasion the difference has been so profound that it caused me to laugh out loud (literally, not the LOL variety that has been overutilized in text communication).  Now, some readers will state that a listener can be convinced of the sonic benefits when there are none to justify their purchase and prevent the human phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance.  More on that in a subsequent article!   

Back to these prices!

If we accept that cables do make a difference in sound, we must now return to their pricing (I clearly neglected to follow the standardized essay format that was imparted to me in Grade 7). Many suspect that high-end cables have the highest margins in the industry based on the cost of materials.  It has also been suggested that high prices are designed to be aligned with the cost of other components to convey the quality of the product to consumers.  There are indeed some audiophiles that will not even consider lower or mid-priced cables for their ultra high-end systems.  Another factor that we fail to consider in pricing (for cables and all products in general) is the actual design. How many prototypes were developed before landing on the final product? How many combinations of metals and insulators and terminations were considered? How many hours were involved in testing?  As an extreme example, we don’t judge the cost of a painting by the combined cost of canvas and oils (perhaps too extreme but hoping this bolsters my point). 

While we can debate the merits of elevated cable pricing to the end of time, it is the consumers who ultimately establish their value.  If the well-heeled audiophile feels that the six-figure investment of cables enhances the sound of his or her system to new levels, there is value to that purchase, regardless of the cost of goods sold.  Some audiophiles have found that lower priced cables exceed the performance of expensive cables while other will contend that there is a linear relationship between cost and sound quality.  These varied opinions are inherent to a line of products with no measurable impact on sound quality.

For those that have experimented with cables in their systems, we can agree that they are a critical component of the audio chain, and invariably require some degree of our attention, and some proportion of our budget.