https://www.gcaudio.com/tips-tricks/why-power-cords-are-impo...

One thing to understand about this niche high end cable market is that intellectual property just isn't a thing. There isn't enough money to fight lawsuits and wage war against copycats. Everyone loses throwing money away.

The end result is that only large companies like AudioQuest can afford to "give away" the science behind their products by patenting them. Other companies have to talk around and obscure what ACTUALLY makes their cable sound good. This is a pretty raw deal for consumers who are left exposed and vulnerable to bad designers, fraudsters, and tricking themselves into thinking something sounds better when it's not. And that's not even getting into value judgements about what a cable is worth based on how much closer to perfection it gets the user!

The system does seem to be working as intended by small niche cable makers who spend lifetimes accumulating arcane knowledge and handbuilding quality cables while keeping the bar for entry to the market high.

Another neat tidbit about cables is that the product lines and price points are not linear. They just can't be in reality from a design perspective. The people that say a cable is a cable are half correct. It's impossible to have a cable lineup of 7 levels and improve on the induction, capacitance and resistance all at the same time in each level. So there are tradeoffs, and occasionally a cheaper cable from the same company will sound better than a more expensive cable because one or two of the parameters were improved while another got worse. Depending on the interactions between the connected equipment and their deviation from perfect, if the parameter that took a step backwards in a more premium cable happens to be the weak point of the equipment as well, then an objectively better and more expensive cable can sound the same or worse.