DO CABLES REALLY MATTER?

prof, good catch. It appears he’s here to brag about the cost of his system and magnificent hearing.

calvinj,

Ok. Then if you don’t mind some questions:

I see those are some fairly expensive cables.

Do you believe such expense is required to get the type of fidelity and sound quality you are hearing from your sources?

Consider: The vast majority of recordings you likely listen to were made using non-boutique cables, priced nothing like what you would have paid for those. And yet, every detail you are hearing now through your expensive cables was conveyed by those far less expensive, non-audiophile-marketed cables used to make many of the sources you are listening to. If you are swooning to, for instance, any of the older audiophile classic recordings, none of these boutique cables with their new-fangled technology claims were around then. And as someone who works in post sound, and has also been in many music studios as well, I would point out a great many of the cables used (and there is so much involved in microphones, recording/studios/monitoring/mixing/mastering etc) are not going to be Nordost or any of the boutique brands you are listening to. (The last big recording/mixing studio I worked for had someone building Canare and Belden cables all the time - far cheaper than many boutique audiophile brands, yet closer to being the industry standard than any audiophile brand).

What does that suggest to you, as to whether the expensive cables were really necessary to convey the level of fidelity you are hearing?

Take an old photograph made with old technology. Do you think you can accurately reproduce it with better tech? Of course. If you were to take that old photo and took a photo of it with the same old tech it was originally taken with, you'd end up with a degraded facsimile. 

Do it enough times and you'd have an awful looking photo compared to the original. All of that old tech was good enough to arrive at it's present state of existence. Now, the order of the day is to faithfully reproduce what you have with something of an order better than the original so as to not further degrade it. 

In fact, you can pull off of that recording things you wouldn't/couldn't get with the older tech. They do it all the time when remastering.

All the best,
Nonoise

 I just don’t care for all of the goofy talk...making up words and talking goofy.

similar to boutique cable sellers?

To my ears, a good quality cable makes a significant difference. However, I play in the cheap end of the pool, and buy used, close out deals, and cruise flea bay on a regular basis. I recently picked up a pair of zu audio wyld cables in their outlet for $32.  They sound substantially better than the old audioquest evergreen cables ($18 )to my ears, and at the moment a bit worse than my silver wire interconnects ($28).  I’ll give them some time to break in (yeah, I believe in that too) on my secondary system. 
My point?  Cables can make a definitive difference, there are always deals if you’re willing to hunt for them and be patient, and not everyone who talks about cables is trying to impress/brag upon how much their system cost.