Only once have I been suckered into buying interconnects that were anything more than standard issue, I got some IXUS speaker cable (because it looked pretty) and a matching phono cable as it was thrown into the deal at "half-price" but was still £25 I think. The greatest shame was that the purchase was made a Richer Sounds

This was around 10 years ago, and recently I was re-using the photo cable for something and snagged one end and pulled hard, pulling the connector off the cable. Bugger I thought, that is my one nice cable ruined! Actually it turned out really well, I took it back to Richer Sounds and they replaced it no questions over the counter without a receipt under it's "lifetime" warranty. So I am now the proud owner of a slightly newer £50 phono to phono cable !!! So the extra £££ was actually worth it (kind of).

This new cable had direction arrows on it, tried it both ways, what a waste of time that was! I feel stupid even thinking about trying that!

Cheers

Cris