The following I posted in reply to a user on MacTalk Australia:
The answer is, your mileage may vary. How much your system benefits from better cables depends on how good it is. There is a lot of overpriced crap out there that isn't worth it, but also some great manufacturers (quite a few small and relatively unknown) who produce cables for a couple of hundred that will make an audible difference.
Better cables should give you more detail, and correspondingly, a better soundstage, where instruments and performers appear more separate in space, not mushed together in a smaller one. They shouldn't colour the sound (many do), simply make it clearer.
I would, if you can, go into a proper hi-fi store (avoid any that have racks of cheap crappy cabling or sell Monster) and ask if you can listen to some favourite music of yours on one of their high-end systems, then switch between cheap and expensive cables. If you can notice a difference, then maybe some decent cables are worth bothering with. If you feel there's none, get some decently-made cheap ones (BlueJeans cables are recommended, as they are made to proper spec) and live with those.
Recently for me, I pulled a good set of Van Den Hul "The Orchid" cables from Audiogon (cheaper than it would have cost me from Duratone in Canberra, one store that will not ******** you about these things), a couple of high quality power cables from a small, but truly dedicated company in China called Audio-gd, and it made a really lovely difference to my system. I have an expensive headphone rig, where it's much easier to hear differences, however. Those differences, for me, increase the enjoyment I get out of listening. Many people enjoy just listening out of an iPod, car radio or whatever, so they don't need to worry about these things. A lot of modern music is designed to sound best just mashed up in a wall of sound.
The answer is, your mileage may vary. How much your system benefits from better cables depends on how good it is. There is a lot of overpriced crap out there that isn't worth it, but also some great manufacturers (quite a few small and relatively unknown) who produce cables for a couple of hundred that will make an audible difference.
Better cables should give you more detail, and correspondingly, a better soundstage, where instruments and performers appear more separate in space, not mushed together in a smaller one. They shouldn't colour the sound (many do), simply make it clearer.
I would, if you can, go into a proper hi-fi store (avoid any that have racks of cheap crappy cabling or sell Monster) and ask if you can listen to some favourite music of yours on one of their high-end systems, then switch between cheap and expensive cables. If you can notice a difference, then maybe some decent cables are worth bothering with. If you feel there's none, get some decently-made cheap ones (BlueJeans cables are recommended, as they are made to proper spec) and live with those.
Recently for me, I pulled a good set of Van Den Hul "The Orchid" cables from Audiogon (cheaper than it would have cost me from Duratone in Canberra, one store that will not ******** you about these things), a couple of high quality power cables from a small, but truly dedicated company in China called Audio-gd, and it made a really lovely difference to my system. I have an expensive headphone rig, where it's much easier to hear differences, however. Those differences, for me, increase the enjoyment I get out of listening. Many people enjoy just listening out of an iPod, car radio or whatever, so they don't need to worry about these things. A lot of modern music is designed to sound best just mashed up in a wall of sound.
