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@Casemold ... first of all, welcome to afterdawn. There are extremes at both ends of this question ... too crappy and rediculouly overprices for the tiny amount of signal improvment. You want to stay away from the really cheapo stuff .. the actual amount of conductive material in the wire is much lower even if the wire looks "thick" so the signal starts out poor and so too with the insulation, its crappy and corrups the signal even more. But the opposite is also true ... sure, you can buy $300 cables where mearsurable but small and not audible differences account for the price ... perhaps o.k. for NASA monitoring Mars, but wasteful. Radio Shacks better home brand are fine. Even the stores you mention will sell good, decent quality cables which aren't terribly expensive. You needn't spend a fortune on monster and the like, but avoid the cheap crap that comes with your TY, cable box, etc. and the cheap bargain stuff at the stores you mentioned, you want a good and uncomprimised signal. Wal_mart and best buy will, for example, sell good solid Philips cables which are neither cheap nor through the roof as does radio shack and other places. Also, stick too the brand names if you're not versed in the science of it. A cable might look good, really thick guage but it's really only 10% highly conductive and 90% tin wire! Avoid the cheapo bargan stuff and you'll be o.k.
Some people would argue about the high-priced stuff but I had an interesting experience. I have really good audio equipment which I had connected with good quality cables. I had the opportunity to buy a lot of top of the line monster cables and 12g speaker wire which probably cost a couple of thousand dollars (got it from a woman whose son had died). I busted my butt disconnecting everything, putting the monster cables and speaker wire and it took me all damn day. Do you know what difference I noticed ... NONE! ...but I had good, decent quality and sturdy cables to begin with. Again, just avoid the cheap crap and you'll be o.k.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 13. April 2007 @ 04:53
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