[FlameGrilled]

As far as the business of interconnects goes, and the mucho degree of 'snake oil' that's used to sell the bloody stuff at audiophile market levels, i think it's all been said before.

In the real world, where you dont spend the substantial deposit of a home on yer hifi kit (most of us, myself included), as long as you buy cables that are substantial, i.e. decent coax, for stuff like interconnects between a player and amp you are ok.

Cost, well, around a £5 buys you a half-decent replacement destined for such stuff - usually the same grade of ready-made that comes with decent multimedia speakers (and it's often good enough).

If you want more, dont be lead into buying silly stuff like the Monster brand - go down your local electrical/electronics spares place and buy some coax and plugs. What you get, for the extra effort, is your choice of interconnect length.. lower loss cabling (not that it's much of an issue for this purpose) and total construction quality control.

Option 2, making up yer own, is a good one as you can buy a small reel of the coax and replace all the cruddy coax leads that come with packaged hifi separates package deals.

Another good idea is to get one substantial lead with two pairs of phono/rca's and a 2xRCA's -> 3.5 mm adaptor.

Not for every day use, but it's a good backup since the cost of ready made non-y cables is far more cost effective than for y cables when you want more than say a metre or two of cable run.

A bodge, you may say..??

Dunno, but when i had the Arcam lashed up to a computer's soundcard (testing the inputs of someone else's ancient soundcard), that lash-up sounded ok.. nothing to complain about.