advertisement


How Much You Spent On Cables In Your System(s)

How Much You Spent On Cables In Your System(s)

  • £250 - £500

    Votes: 30 15.7%
  • £501 — £1,000

    Votes: 28 14.7%
  • £1,001 - £2,000

    Votes: 20 10.5%
  • £2,001 - £5,000

    Votes: 14 7.3%
  • £5,001 - £10,000

    Votes: 6 3.1%
  • > £10,000

    Votes: 7 3.7%
  • 0 - £250

    Votes: 86 45.0%

  • Total voters
    191
£500 -£1000 all bought either pre-owned or heavily discounted new items and I'm including rewiring two tonearms as their cables form part of the loom, that's 3 tonearms cables, one 1/2m attenuated interconnect for CD, 1/2m interconnect from phono stage to pre, 7m interconnects from pre to monos and a pair of 1.5 m loudspeaker cables.
 
Under £75 for me... Easily. Maybe I should re-think as currently listening to some ATC SCM40 which are 'ruthlessly unforgiving of poor upstream gear'.
 
Hmm, about 150 quid at best guess, so maybe 1% of system cost, would be much lower than 1% other than more recently changing to a stack of power amps, 8 channels of active xo with multiple subs. Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s nearly 100m of cable all in so prob a quid or 2 a metre

Good to actually see how many replies on here are sub £100 or so
 
I wonder when someone is going to try and beat £0 lolz, its going to happen, I can sense @booja30 is trying to come up with a plan already! Needs the badge of honour!

Don't worry, you are all winners in this world folks, don't be gutted it you spent 56p more than the next person. Everyone is special!
 
About £50 I guess. Gotham and Van Damme interconnects bought new and some Ixos and QED interconnects bought used plus Belden 9497 speaker cable.

Total system cost is probably about £1500 so the whole thing is rather more modest than much of the gear here. I'm wondering if I would spend more on posh cables if I had a £££ megasystem - I've honestly no idea.
 
I wonder when someone is going to try and beat £0 lolz, its going to happen, I can sense @booja30 is trying to come up with a plan already! Needs the badge of honour!

Don't worry, you are all winners in this world folks, don't be gutted it you spent 56p more than the next person. Everyone is special!
Clearly I'm not alone in not pursuing the finer cables that are available -- half who responded are in the £0-£250 bracket. But you've singled me out in multiple threads now. Did I hurt your feelings or cause you to doubt your cable spending? Using the ignore button is more mature than picking fights IMO.
 
Last edited:
Clearly I'm not alone in not pursuing the 'finer' cables that available -- almost half of people who responded are in the £0-£250 bracket). But you've singled me out in multiple thread now. Did I hurt your feelings or cause you to doubt your cable spending? Using the ignore button is more mature than picking fights IMO.

I love your cyclic rhetoric @booja30! Are we not friends? Aw, sucks.

My cable spending is ace. Love it. Love yours too. No hate here.
 
Given the system has been assembled over a number of years, the true measure is likely retail value now of the cables as a percentage of the overall likely retail value now of the system as a whole. Cables come out at around 5% of the whole.
 
In my system I find mains cables and speaker cable make a greater difference than interconnects, so tend to test and invest in those.

I tried many interconnects at many price levels including from the likes of Transparent and HFC and others but could not hear any difference between any of them including Maplin's top of the range RCA cable (£18). I bought the Maplin. Later I demoed the Townshend F1 rca and it was noticeably better. I find that with cables - so many sound identical until one that doesn’t.
 
Apart from the speaker cables, I bought everything second hand in very good condition for half price, there’s a ton of options on the used market.
My speaker cables (Linn K20) were the ones that made the biggest difference.
 
In my entire hifi history I think I've probably spent maybe £150 on cables, most of which I no longer have as it was bought for specific kit like a full set of cables for vintage Quad amps (passed on to the new owner when I sold them), xlr terminated speaker cable etc. I do still have some 2nd hand ecosse speaker cables and perhaps one or two sets of interconnects that I bought new plus some cheap digital cables, but I think most of my current gear is connected by cables that came free with used kit I've bought.
 
Only cheap copper looms bought from the local DIY store.
I make my own interconnects with good professional coax bought from my electronics retailer.
 
Last edited:
It would be interesting, maybe in another poll, to see what percentage of system price was spent on cables. I’ve just used DCSk (German) 2.5mm2 or 4mm2 speaker cables for the last few years, and whatever mains cables came with the system. Interconnects are nothing special. And my systems have been under 1.5k€ in the last few years, so the cables have been a small percentage of the total. If I wanted to tweak anything I would consider miniDSP or changing speakers before thinking of cables.

Agreed. IMHO, how much anyone spent on cables is not very enlightening at all. If you had a £25k system it might be quite 'normal'/reasonable to spend £1000-£2000 or even more on cables. But if you had a £1000 system that would be insane.

Looking at the current responses, if someone up thread says 'I spent £2k on cables' many readers might take a sharp intake of breath but in the context of how much their system costs that could be seen in a very different light. I would think it is more useful to ask people what % of their total present system cost is accounted for by cables, rather than the absolute figure (though if you were a headline writer you might want to know that too).
 
I am not sure, but I guess somewhere around £500.
That includes the AV system and stuff that I have forgotten about that is in the attic. Also I have given the kids all their interconnects and speaker wire.

Never thought about changing the power cables, so everything has the originals.

Does it make a difference? And if so, what is it that you identify in positive/negative terms.
 
Agreed. IMHO, how much anyone spent on cables is not very enlightening at all. If you had a £25k system it might be quite 'normal'/reasonable to spend £1000-£2000 or even more on cables. But if you had a £1000 system that would be insane.

Looking at the current responses, if someone up thread says 'I spent £2k on cables' many readers might take a sharp intake of breath but in the context of how much their system costs that could be seen in a very different light. I would think it is more useful to ask people what % of their total present system cost is accounted for by cables, rather than the absolute figure (though if you were a headline writer you might want to know that too).

Disagree.

It has no relevance, the cables are part of the system, and for me can sometimes be a sound change as big as one you would find with a component (especially DACS), it's all part of the circus. You can't have a Big Top without the lights inside.

To be fair, it shouldn't really matter to anyone else what someone spends on their hobby, it's their choice, their hard earned, especially not to the point of 'judging' someone because of the mythical designated 'percentage'' factor, it's just damn right crass in my opinion. Who gives a f**k? If you do, you need a life, a soul, some charity work or anything in between!

The poll was interesting to see as a curiosity thing, but once you start wanting to know systems costs and then 'percentages' of costings, it becomes very judgemental, which in a hobby/enthusiast arena, is completely uncalled for and unnecessary. If a person wants to spend a grand on some speaker cable, and a grand on an amp, so be it, their ears, their money, their life.

It's like watches. To me the most ridiculous thing ever, when a £4.99 Casio does the same thing, but I aint gonna question some dude who spent 50k on when, when it does the same as the Casio (theoretically), its his choice. I can imagine there are many people on this forum have expensive watches and £2.99 speaker cable. And watches have some outrageous marketing terminology. Again, choices. Happiness.
 
In my system I find mains cables and speaker cable make a greater difference than interconnects, so tend to test and invest in those.

I tried many interconnects at many price levels including from the likes of Transparent and HFC and others but could not hear any difference between any of them including Maplin's top of the range RCA cable (£18). I bought the Maplin. Later I demoed the Townshend F1 rca and it was noticeably better. I find that with cables - so many sound identical until one that doesn’t.
Same experience but I have to admit I didn't try or compare a whole lot of cables throughout the years. It is true that many cables may sound strikingly similar until one suddenly sounds quite different. During my early years I compared several cheap interconnects from the likes of QED etc. costing below £100 and they all sounded almost the same to me. Later through the years I have the privilege of trying few costlier cables all mostly bought used.

Over the past 2 years I tried some cables in the higher price bracket and came to the same conclusion. Power cords come in first for me as they brought the largest impact to the system, followed by speaker cables and finally interconnects of all sorts. A disclaimer is I didn't really try whole lot of cables. It's probably 2 or 3 of the same type. My latest pair of interconnect is XLR balanced and the other pair is RCA single-ended. Only 2 pairs of interconnects available.
 


advertisement


Back
Top