What is the most expensive cable you have bought?

I bought, both used, Synergistic Research Tesla Accelerator bi-wire speaker cables (£600) and IC (£500). I'm very happy with them although even at used prices their expensive. Previously I had XLO reference 1 cables from the 1995.

 

Had Black Rhodium Oratorios at £600 for 1 m, also still have the prototype of Chords Signature speaker cable, thats a few bobs worth, cant remember how much.
Currently using NVA Sound Cord ic's at a HUGE £9.99 for 0.7 m, and they are BRILLIANT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

IMO, some cables can be regarded as a component upgrade.....I do not see cables as just cables.

 

Hi HI-FI addict , tell me about it i have had a number of Audience cables go belly up. To be fare it was mostly the old type. Because i mostly use XLR that involves two cables together ,one for signal one for return and ground ,and as they are quite springy if you move them ,they can move inside the sheathing and stress the connection in the XLR plug . This results in a loss of signal strength or no signal at all .

In the old days the cables were not bound together and would break quite easily ,however to improve things further Audience's binding needs to be tighter and cover the whole length of the cable(thus preventing the movement of any element). The negative to this is they would not be as flexible(lots of cables out there which are not flexible) however the springy nature of these cables is part of the problem .Thought this isn't an issue with the single RCA to RCA cable . Many reading this might say why bother ,simple answer they sound great .
I will start a thread asking about cables for my setup.

Regards D Louth

 

A lot of sensible answers.....

the normal reason why cables are made as they are ...come down to cost ....ie it would cost far more to fix an issue on a run of several thousand plus than to just replace the odd one or two that have failed .....

from my own perspective ....any movement of cable/wire connector is only going to have one effect ..and thats not going to improve the sound.

If your using conductor in the order of 0.3mm or smaller then any wobble will eventually lead to failure ...let alone when you come to unplug them and accidentally pull on the outer sleeve rather than the plug ....

I'd like to think most of mine will survive some mis use ...but no cable how ever well built is going to be indestructible.

 

£1150 for an IC

One side of the coin:

I still think I was absolutly bonkers paying that much for two bits of copper cable.

Other side:

After listening to what seemed like a cable a week, for 6 months, ran two local shops, and almost two internet cable sites out of ideas, came across this cable that far exceeded all my expectations, I was so amazed all the parts of all the other cables I loved all came into one cable