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In my opinion, cables can make a huge difference in a system. Many years ago I sold hi end stereo equipment. When I started, I was quite skeptical about the importance of good cables, since I had a background in recording and many people in that world felt cables made little to no difference. I very quickly learned how much of a difference good cables make (even digital cables). I was constantly upgrading/switching components in my system when I worked there, since suppliers all wanted us to own their products and would make them very affordable. The biggest upgrade sonically to my system was when I went from a pretty good speaker cable to Kimber 8TC (yup, bigger improvement than various amp, CD player and speaker upgrades!!!).
Having said that, a more expensive cable doesn't necessarily mean it will sound better in your system and obviously differences (or the need for higher quality cables) only matters if you have a fairly good system to begin with. A rule of thumb in hi fi systems is to spend 10% of the cost of the system on cables. Of course, use common sense.
My recording monitor setup doubles as my hi fi system. Benchmark DAC, Simaudio i-5.3 amp, B&W 805s monitors. In my system, swapping cables often makes huge differences. A few weeks ago, a hi fi dealer lent me an Audio Note AN-Vx silver interconnect cable to go from my DAC to amp. It was such a huge improvement over the already great Audio Note Lexus copper interconnect, that a 65 year old client I am recording commented on how his song sounded "better, cleaner, more detailed and richer" before I mentioned anything about a different cable. Suffice to say, I returned the cable as I can't really afford to spend 1k on a 1 metre cable at this point, however if money was not an issue, I would still have it.
I'd love to hear from some of the well known and reputable engineers on the issue of cables.
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