Let me start off by saying this is a recent experience I had and you are welcome to believe me or not but you are a fool if you don't at least try for yourself. It's crazy to spend the money for High Definition equipment and then use cheap cables that will never allow you to realize the equipment's potential.

I know you can find many articles on the internet that tell you these $10.00 HDMI cables are as good as any of these high dollar ones. Some of the articles, by respected persons. Why they would write a complete false statement is beyond me. I was a victim of letting this effect my judgment. When I first got a BR player I bought some Belkin $40.00 HDMI cables that were 1.3 compliant. I thought, "hey, at least they aren't the $10.00, they should be fine". Of course, I got a picture. Of course, the picture was still better than DVD. However, read on.

I recently bought an AV8003 preamp processor which replaced my Primare 31.7. I used the same HDMI cables. Before I was just using them for video, now I went HDMI video and audio from sources to preamp to TV. The AV8003 sounded good enough in the store for me to order one and take a chance on replacing my 31.7 and modernizing. I used multi-channel analog with the Primare as it wasn't HDMI. Well if you've seen my thread on the Marantz AV8003 you will see that I was less than impressed after swapping out the preamps. My experience was not the same as others who bought the AV8003, so I got to thinking what could be wrong. I was fairly sure everything was set up correctly. The only difference was how I was connecting the components to each other. Saturday I went in and borrowed some Tributaries Series 7 HDMI cables. In case you didn't read my thread my issue with the AV8003 is the sound didn't disappear from the speakers, it was rather localized and compressed sounding. If one has no reference, you may not even have noticed this. Even handicapped the AV8003 sounded better than a receiver and through a good amp, some might be satisfied, if no reference. Don't be satisfied, try better cables. I had serious buyers remorse. The AV8003 at the time wasn't even close to my 31.7. After inserting the Series 7 between my BR player and preamp the sound opened up tremendously, soundtrack music was beyond the speakers again, birds and ambient effects seemed to come from no where, as they should, things sounded more natural, clashes of swords again sounded like steel on steel As I was viewing a BR disc for sound I noticed the picture was better too. That was a shock because I was still using Belkin between the TV and preamp. Wow, when I put the Series 7 in the Belkins place from pre to TV the picture was stunning. I'm saying the picture improved significantly, it was like there was more depth and images in the background were visible, a large gain in black level, dark scenes had more detail, bright outdoor scenes had more color so you could make out detail better and the overall picture was sharper and vivid. I'm not selling the Series 7, I will testify that they are excellent but I picked them because I didn't want to pay the price for Transparent and I thought the Series 7 should be good enough at $150.00 for a 1 meter to show if the cables were my problem. I will buy the 1 meter and a 3 meter and happily hand over the money. I can not express to you the relief and excitement I feel over my system now. What I'm hoping to sell, just enough to get you to try, is the idea that there is a difference in performance of HDMI cables between cheap, average and high quality.

Some of the cheap ones won't even work, you may notice with average cable flecs in your picture like little fire flies, what you should notice with a high quality cable is a brilliant picture displaying HD as it should and if you have the gear, equally stunning audio. The difference between the Belkin and Series 7 in audio performance was larger than mp3 and CD. So don't let anyone tell you digital is digital. I'm not an engineer so I can't tell why this difference exists but I have found through experience that there is a difference and I just wanted to share my story in hope you would listen so you can reap the benefit I did with your own system.