So you see having 10k to 15k of cables that do absolutely nothing more than a set of cables that would total somewhere around 250$ as a good meassure??
You have been swindled. I understand it's hard to admit. Gather strength and admit it or stay the proverbial fool who parts with his money.
I find nothing wrong with having quality cables. I've been using Audioquest since 2004 and never had any issues with them ever. No broken cables and they all perform their jobs. Price is not an issue for me. I prefer to have quality cables in my system over cheap cables. I've experienced issues with cables from mono price and others at that level.
The biggest issue I had when outfitting my entire system in Mono price cables HDMI was the interference I got with my control system ( Universal Remote at that time). My IR emitters would light up and my remote system would not work. I discovered the Mono price HDMI cables leaking interference into my IR emitter cables. I moved the IR emitter cables away from the HDMI cables and the issue would go away.
So I replaced them with Audioquest HDMI cables and the issue was gone.
So performance wise the Audioquest HDMI cables where superior to the Monprice level cables. They are junk trash and I'm not interested in putting junk trash into my fairly nice system.
Just so you know I have been testing cables since the 90's and learned a ton about entry to mid to high end cables. I will agree with you on one point that high end cables can cost a ton of money and yield no benefits after a certain point. I wanted to learn that on my own and not just take anyones word on that as I have talked to and learned from some of the best Engineers in this field.
I get it and have seen first hand cables that cost so much money for no reason other then they can build them and someone will buy them I'm not here to judge anyone on their choices or call them a fool. You don't know me or my back ground so you might want to refrain yourself. But to make a blanket statement as you do is simply wrong. Cheap cables and all the talk about how cables don't matter and fools buy high end cables etc etc etc is nonsense. A cable has a job to do . To get a signal from pint A to Point B. Many cables can do this even cheap ones IF they are built correctly. Termination is so important and so is quality of materials used. But after a certain point you can't make it any better. Cables don't make anything better as many of these high end cable companies claim. Once the goal is achieved nothing more can be done to make anything better. I learned that for myself and learned it from top Engineers in this field. But there is a few other factors that come into play with cables and that is leaking. RF and EMI interference can effect that performance of ones system. If you use cheaply built cables you are introducing interference into surrounding cables. I have found this mostly with HDMI cables and power cables. Better quality power cables don't improve anything over properly built correct gauge cables for the power they need to transfer. But a shielded power cable is great because they don't leak out interference in electromagnetic energy.
I don't give a crap about what audioquest or any of these other high end cables claim their cables do. What I do care about is my system and now it peforms. I spend a lot of money building and rebuilding my system over the decades I'm not about to introduce issues just to save a few bucks because the people on the internet think they know about cables. Most people who talk that nonsense has no personal experience and just likes to shame people who use higher quality cables.
Many of these cable companies audioquest included build entry level cables all the way up to super high end models. I wanted to learn from myself IF keep going up the ladder would yield any performance benefits or shielding benefits which is a perfomance benefit as cables around them can do their jobs without other signals entering in the chain. I can tell you this with HDMI and Digital cables, once the goal is achieved there is nothing more you can do to the cable to make it work any better. I learned this and stopped climbing the ladder.
With audioquest their entry level cables perform at a top level and when you move up you don't see or hear any performance gains. The Forest or Cinnamon level cables are a great solution for just about all system no matter what level they are. I have had higher end models like Chocolate and Carbon and didn't experience anything in my system that warranted going any further. I also had many other brands and levels of HDMI cables in my system and found many differences in other brands not working as they should.
My Last 2 TV's I have used for testing was a Pioneer Elite Kuro 60 inch Plasma and my current Sony 65 inch Z9D so I have quality reference level monitors to test on. Audio wise I have had Pioneer Elite SC models, Rotel , NAD and currently a Sony 5000es receiver so I have also had quality preamps and receivers. Speakers I have had Polk Audio of many levels, Dynaudio, Totem, Velodyne, Focal and currently running Def Tech Mythos Atmos Setup. So for audio I have also had some pretty nice stuff to use to test out cables with.
My cables are a lifetime of trail and error to see how much of this stuff is true and how much is bullshit. Most of it's bullshit but there is some benefits to using better quality cables. You be the judge in your own system what cables you use for your own reasons. I'm not gonna judge you if you use Mono price HDMI or Pure Silver top of the line HDMI cables that in my opinion don't make any performance difference . But if you like them and are willing to spend your money on them cool man.
