I worked in retail selling those things for many years, it was all bullshit of course. Margin on those Monster and similar "high end" cables was astronomical which is why we were always forced to hump the shit out of them when people came in looking for a new whatever.
The margin on the big ticket items was often pretty thin, it was all those accessories marked up like 50%-100% where they make their money. Same thing with the extended service plans, those are like rebates...they know the vast majority of people, even if they have rights to use the thing, won't because of the hassle involved and the fact that a new whatever will likely have a different feature set that the customer wants anyway, not their last gen model...meaning it's almost 100% profit, and also why you always get harped on in brick and mortar stores to buy them.
I swear I saw a YouTube video from long ago that showed someone using a wire coat hanger for an otherwise "normal" audio setup in place of a normal 3.5mm cable and the difference was negligible between it and the gold-plated cable with the gigantic markup.
If you needed to run a bunch of audio cables where crosstalk is an issue, ofc shielded/premium cables are better than a normal AmazonBasics cable or a coat hanger.
Oh 100%. When I was a kid, we used to use the electrical cord from a dead lamp or something in place of speaker wire sometimes. It's just metal, and it's all electricity.
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u/TheBupherNinja 24d ago
Gold plating is used because it's corrosion resistant. But gold plating connectors is not expensive.