Amazon to $300 beats $300 to $1,000

The jump from Amazon Basics to a $300 cable is bigger than the jump from $300 to $1,000. A frugal man should like that sentence, and I do.

I learned it with speaker cables first. The AudioQuest Rocket 33, then the Rocket 88: each step brought better resolution, more natural tonality, improved dynamics and less grain in the highs. Each step was also smaller than the one before it, so the curve keeps rising and flattening at the same time.

Interconnects told the same story. I have owned AudioQuest from Red River up to Black Beauty, and the biggest improvements came between $200 and $600; beyond that you pay a lot for very small gains. I mean steps inside the ranges of established brands, by the way, not one brand's price against another's.

And you know what? There is one comparison where the word small does not apply. Amazon Basics against Transparent Reference is colossal. But that is the whole curve in one jump, from the floor to the top, and very few systems can reveal all of it.

Spend the first few hundred dollars without fear. Every dollar after that has to prove itself in your own system.