Anyone have experience with audioquest? What about Nordost?
I have a new system on its way and I plan to purchase all new cables/wires. There are tons of brands out there and I don't want to buy snake oil lol. Following the 5-7% rule I have a budget of around $500 or so.
I would recommend A2Z Cables. They're usually made of Belden or Canare brand cable, so you really can't go wrong. Also their prices are reasonable. Personally I've never heard of spending $500 on audio cables unless you're buying snake oil or really long or thick cables (due to the amount of copper that can be used).
I spent more than $500 on cables and bought cables, no snake oil I'm afraid. I used inexpensive cables for many years. Then I bought better and there has been no turning back.
Danny, I have no idea what gear you're buying and therefore would have no idea what to recommend. Need more info.
BTW there are plenty of good cables that aren't terribly expensive and that certainly aren't snake oil. The Kimber Kable Timbre is an excellent budget performer as is the Analysis Plus Oval One.
Price usually has little to do with how good a cable can be. Besides the Radio Shack and Monster garbage, some expensive exotic cables can fall short in performance to cables costing a fraction of the price. And vice versa.
I can vouche for Audioquest. They make some good stuff. Some of it is absurd, but their relatively reasonable stuff works well in my system. Key words - my system.
As Art said, we need to know what gear, and what type of cables you're looking at - RCA, XLR, Optical, Speaker, etc.
Audioquest makes very nice cables. Good clean well balanced sound. Like most brands their quality varies and as Stu said relates less to price than preference. Let's face it all cables color sound it's really about what flavor you want.
Always remember that electrons are not people. They cannot see the beautiful plugs on the end of the gorgeous covering. They follow the path of least resistance on their way to the connection to the pc board in the receiver or amplifier. If someone tries to convince you to buy a huge hoselike ac cable to connect to the ac outlet on your wall and then to connect to your amplifier, leave. The other side of the outlet on your wall is romex electrical cable. Putting a 3 foot pice of thickly insulated hose between the wall and the amp will make NO Difference! Never buy anything that doesn't make the sound you hear better. P.
"Putting a 3 foot pice of thickly insulated hose between the wall and the amp will make NO Difference!"
I used to think the same thing until I heard one. Night and day, make or break a system type improvement? No. But a difference (I didn't say improvement). From the few I've heard, and a lot of what I read, power cords are probably one of the most inconsistant things as far as improving a system. Again, cost means very little. Naim makes an upgraded power cord for their equipment which can be used on a lot of other gear. Price - $25. A lot of Naim owners claim a huge improvement in sound.
"Never buy anything that doesn't make the sound you hear better." Absolutely. Never buy or not buy anything just because others think it will/won't make any difference.
"Putting a 3 foot pice of thickly insulated hose between the wall and the amp will make NO Difference!"
I really have to disagree along with Stu, Mine made the world of difference (and it was only $80), I also have Audioquest (diamondback) and love them. Huge jump over Monster (yeah I was young and dumb....still am I suppose) and have been very happy with my purchase. I run a Jolida tube amp with denon 2910 as stand alone (no video) cdp.
Joe points out the inherent problems with sweeping generalizations regarding audio/video equipment performance. One would think that Stu should know better by now. So says the MOFO.
The MOFO is one of our old friends reregistered under yet a new name, yet again. How ya doin' big fella. BTW Stu is one of the good guys and so is Joe, they'll work it out...ok.
Jim Bob...dude I know you can do better...be good JB.