DO CABLES REALLY MATTER?

rhartshorn,

Just to make it clear (if it wasn’t already): I’m not an engineer myself and therefore no expert on cables. I remain skeptical about many of the claims made by high end cable manufacturers, but open minded to the possibility some cables sound different (or even "better" in terms of transmitting higher fidelity).

What I’m getting at now is a sort of conundrum I have pointed out before when audiophiles swear by high priced boutique audiophile cables: that they are generally listening to sources created by regular-old pro-grade (one hopes!) cables. Lots of it. So it seems inherently odd to say one "needs" to spend the big bucks on the type of cables mentioned in the OP (let alone the stratospheric prices of many other cables) in order to transmit a truly amazing level of fidelity. "Regular" cable used to create the source clearly is already up to that task.

As to your Nordost question: IF the Nordost cables in question could in fact transmit more information than regular cables, then sure it would make sense similar quality Nordost cables would give you the benefit of recovering that higher level of information. It’s like moving from a 1080p TV to a 4K TV. If you are using a 4K tv to watch only sources captured by a 1080p camera feed, then you will only ever be marvelling at what the 1080p camera could have captured. But if it were a 4K camera capturing more information, and now you have 4K res source to replicate, then the upgrade to 4K TV makes sense in order to see that extra detail.

Does studio grade cable the pinnacle of sound quality, not to be exceeded by audiophile boutique cables? I’m not sure - again, I’m not an EE. The best I can do is look at the discussions between EEs and get my read on the general debate. It seems common to read from people with the relevant expertise - who aren’t trying to sell cables - that you don’t need super expensive cables to successfully transmit everything you want through a cable. That’s been pretty much done for decades and decades with professional grade cables. (For instance, Belden etc).And that it’s possible to make cables sound different - but that’s not the same as "higher fidelity" or producing new or more information that a normal, competently designed and much less expensive cable can transmit.

That’s my read on the debates I’ve read. And like others, my own experience also informs my own hunches as well. That said...though many blind cable tests have not shown people can reliably tell expensive cables apart from well designed cheaper cables, there are *some* blind tests that have yielded apparently positive results.And that’s intriguing. I I’m certainly open minded about it. (Though...again...detecting differences doesn’t automatically equate to "higher fidelity" as if one cable couldn’t transmit all the information for the signal. If one cable simply sculpts the frequencies a bit differently, people may detect that, and even prefer it).

(I used to have quite a number of conversations about all this stuff with the cable-makers at my old studio. They were degreed EEs, very experienced with cables, and stuck pretty much to Canare and Belden for the raw materials. Those cable makers have a long history of expertise and reliability, and supply the type of measured specs, with little additional b.s., that often go missing or buried by marketing hype in the Audiophile market. I had a number of my own AV and audio cables made by those folks that have served me well for many years).

Sorry Prof, I might have missed that you weren’t an engineer. I’m still catching up on who’s who. Your statement is actually quite logical. It would seem that one cannot reproduce sound that is objectively more accurate than the source. I think that might bring my observation more into the forefront then...   we’re actually chasing what sounds good to us and not what is necessarily the most accurate.  I think we might be able to agree that different metals or construction techniques might offer a different sound, and that sound might be more or less pleasant to an individual listener in a given system. However, I’m no engineer either, so I could be wrong. 

An EE cannot tell you what you hear.

Very true. I am of the opinion that if you’re enjoying what you hear then you’re doing it right, whether you’re listening through bent coat hanger or million dollar depleted uranium balanced cables. 
It does make conversations like this difficult though, because enjoyment is subjective, so people look for objectivity in measurements. If those don’t exist to support an opinion, then it may be “right” to the person hearing it, and wrong to the data driven types. 
For myself, I’ll keep tweaking my system and hopefully enjoying the results. 

rja,
Someone with the relevant expertise in EE could certainly predict to a significant degree what you hear. People in audio do it all the time. In my work in post production sound, if I couldn’t predict what you hear my job would be impossible (given I am manipulating sound all day long).

Further, the more you know about sound technology, be it the effects of manipulating various frequencies, what speaker measurements mean, what cable measurements mean, etc, the more you can predict what *you* will hear.

(I’ve known some amazing mixers who often blew me away at how accurately they identified frequency deviations - and knew exactly what things would sound like with a tweak of a dial).

And remember that audio equipment manufacturers, for instance speaker designers, clearly have knowledge about what technical parameters relate to which subjective effects. If they didn’t, they’d all be thrashing around in the dark, and experience, knowledge and expertise would count for nothing. Any decent speaker designer, for instance, would know what to tweak in their crossover design/drivers that will predictably produce, say, a more forward or deeper more recessed soundstage, etc.