Perhaps the confusion in regards to (as well as bad feelings towards) RCA interconnects is an unintentional mix-up between good and bad experiences with build quality, aesthetics, and technical capabilities vs audible benefits.
If being completely honest, most, if not all, of us would agree that reasonably priced, well-made RCA cables, if left completely alone, can and have served well... providing excellent, if not perfect connections for our home audio systems.
The line of diminishing returns, audibly and electrically speaking, is well within the parameter specs of even the most lowly budget RCA cables for home use. Simple quality can be achieved and at low cost if done correctly. Simple sometimes is best. An uncomplicated connection in most cases, in regards to electrical and hi-fi systems, is really all that is required to reach 100% proficiency, efficiency, and dependability. Anything beyond that simply becomes an exercise in futility. As they say, a connection is a connection... just like the hidden, unseen basic wiring in our speakers, headphones, amps, etc. which is doing it's job perfectly well even in an extremely narrow, naked, and/or shockingly simple state with no fancy connectors and/or heavy-gauged sizing to speak of.
With that said, on the flip-side most of us do have our individual horror stories and nightmarish flashbacks of those sadly made RCA interconnect cables that we once owned... you know the ones with the poor shielding, faulty soldering, and/or ill-fitting connectors that were unfortunately repeatedly plugged in and out of our audio equipment until their 'loosey-goose' ways, buzzing back-talking, and overall lazy ill-work ethics drove us into mad rages and fits resulting in our cursing and whipping them about until they were thrown into a garbage can. I do remember owning a few pairs of those!
