Not alway Joe, and certainly not in HiFi, otherwise a £2k interconnect should crap all over a £50 one. I originally bought the Entech because at the time it sounded better than the McLaren DAC20 despite the fact that it only cost a fraction of it's price.
I know, I know. I guess what I'm saying is that if you want something substantially better, you usually have to pay quite a bit more, otherwise you end up wallowing in mid-fi limbo. After many years of doing just that, I came to my senses and bought secondhand/ex-dem some really great stuff that would have been way out of my range bought new.