There is a balance. Nothing wrong with overpriced components if you see it as functional art. When you buy a car, you can pay extra for nicer paint, and in the case of Porsche, even different colored seatbelts. In all cases, the fancy paint doesn’t rust more quickly and all of the seatbelts are equally safe. You can buy ceramic brakes which offer superior performance but are unlikely to be appreciated by regular drivers, except for cleaner rims, or “sport chrono” packages which increase performance beyond already “too dangerous for streets and is track use only”. You can get a Model S Plaid or in earlier years a GT-R Nismo and get better bang for the buck, but there was a brand surcharge and then a performance surcharge. But in general any car is good.
You can even get the LFA or Ford GT which had unique “exhaust and engine” sounds and were for fans of the brand, not unlike McIntosh which is very competent but has a very high brand identity.
When it comes to audio, I think odd speakers and turntables fall into this category of not hurting anyone. When you talk about all these other tweaks, it gets into snake oil territory. Maybe you could convince me some extreme combination of factors causes cable lifters to matter.
The problem is when a cable lifter is going for $500-600 each, or you have cables that go for as much as a Porsche that you will rightfully get criticism.
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It’s one thing to buy a Bugatti even though it never breaks the speed limit, or a fully loaded Land Cruiser just to go to yoga class. You can buy a Halcro amp, or a dCS audio stack or even a fully loaded Linn LP12 Klimax and it falls into the category of “awesome purchase, I am glad I can get similar performance for less — but sure, if I had your money…”
But more importantly, this also extends to the $84 cable as well. If the $84 cable isn’t meaningfully different from the $20 cable, it’s something to discuss…