[brudgers]

It is reasonable to use gold plated connectors when the jacks are gold plated just as with any other electrical connection. Matching metals avoids oxidation do to galvanic action. Sure it probably doesn't matter with audio cables, but it is reasonable in that case.

But of course $20 gold cables connecting two $1000 electrical components with steel jacks doesn't make technical sense. For many people it makes emotional sense in a way where nobody gets hurt so it's not a place I find my outrage and it's not the most ignorant thing I am likely to come across on any given day. YMMV.

Anyway, you can measure the difference between a 1000Hz and a 120Hz display with an ordinary oscilloscope. With audio cables not so much.

[amluto]

I used to make my own RCA cables out of bulk RG59 or RG6 coax (which has excellent performance [1] and is cheap) and decent connectors. “Decent” means that it doesn’t corrode, goes on easily, stays on, and makes good electrical contact with the shield and center conductor.

A really nice compression connector costs under $2. The tool costs about $20. The cable costs basically nothing. Other than being a thick and a bit stiff, the results are excellent.

[1] Unbalanced audio is sensitive to picking up 60Hz noise. RG6 isn’t designed for such low frequencies, but any decent coaxial cable will fairly effectively limit this type of noise to the shield. Balanced cable would be much better but needs different gear.

[brudgers]

I buy my RCA cables for a buck from bins in charity shops. It doesn't make sense for me to make them economically or time wise. But that's me. Because I am cheap and informed, I wouldn't buy a new gold-plated audio cable anymore.

But I understand why people would and the usual reason is reasonable. People buy gold plated HDMI cables as insurance in the face of uncertainty. Same as any other insurance.

Sure the gold plated HDMI cable market is exploitive. That's capitalism baby. There's a lot of specific life circumstance that's led me to make slightly-informed right cable for the right job choices.

Likewise there's a set of circumstances that put me in a place where I think it makes sense to me to think about how I am choosing. I don't begrudge anyone having more money than sense. That amount of money exists for everyone.

[amluto]

It’s possible to have a genuinely bad RCA cable:

- It could be unshielded. Yes, this is a thing. It can pick up all kinds of easily audible noise.

- It could have no contact or intermittent contact at one of the terminations. A bad shield contact will result in a cable that mostly works but can buzz horribly.

- It can be hard to connect or can fall out by accident.

But the real reason I made my own is for length. A cheap $1 cable is probably fine for, say 2 feet, but if I needed 11 feet, that cheap cable wouldn’t reach. Even the least audiophilic listener can tell the difference between music and complete silence :) Making an RCA cable from coax is easier and compression connectors is faster than making one from solder terminals, especially the cheap ones with un-tinned cups and fiddly stain relief.

re: HDMI cables: that gold plating is indeed useless, but HDMI cables are built to different standards, and a cable of the wrong type won’t do what you want it to.

[brudgers]

<-> Ten foot component video cables are not uncommon but sometimes a gang of five might be as much as three dollars, if they haven't been there long enough for the tag color to cycle.

But yes, most of my runs are shorter than that. I really only need long RCA's for running audio from instruments and outboard on one side of my desk to the mixer at the other. The short runs aren't long enough to have significant capacitance, resistance, or experience inductive noise beyond what my projects require. They are a reasonable engineering decision.

<-> Ordinary RCA cables are more supple and more compact than 1/4" or XLR. If I was making my own long run cables from scratch, I'd use CAT5/6/7 anywhere I could. The stiffness and bulk of coax wouldn't match most of my use. Though that's my use not yours.

<-> I was using gold-plated-HDMI as an obvious example of the audiophile market segment.

<-> My experience has been ordinary RCA cables are more reliable than ordinary 1/4 for general patching because the strain relief tends to be better proportioned to the weight of the cable. And there's good availability of adapters to other common unshielded plug form factors. Again, at least for my use.