I have been and audioquest fan for some time and have settled on mostly their lower end stuff (sidewinder, topaz, etc.), but I also have some Jaguar, VDM-5, and Diamondback cables. This past weekend I was helping with a friend's rather expensive setup (arcam pre, vandersteen speakers, marantz dvd, etc.) and was rather surprized that my trusty speakers did not measure up to the fancier AnalysisPlus & MIT stuff he had. We've been debating cables for some time (AQ vs. AP) but never really did side-by side comparisons.

Basically he thinks that brands have their own character, whereas I always thought that the determining factor was the price of the cable. I have also always thought that as long as I wasn't using the included generic cables with a component, that everything else in that price range was pretty much a wash.

We did a few blind tests and there was a marked difference between the AP cables and the cheap stuff from AQ, perhaps I should have expected that. But more importantly, I also tried my trusty AQ Diamondback and Jaguar cables and was still noticing differences. Not that one was better than the other, but they had different personalities, although we really had to crank things up and tweak the music to hear very small differences.

What I've come away with, is that AQ cables whether it's their cheapest stuff or the much more expensive stuff, tends to overemphasize the bass. They also, perhaps as a consequence, seem to have less in the midrange. Is this generally true?

I'm looking to buy a couple of cables to do some more extensive tests at home with my own setup. Can anyone recommend some cables in the $100-300 range that are known to have a notably different sound?