DO CABLES REALLY MATTER?


Yes they do.  I’m not here to advocate for any particular brand but I’ve heard a lot and they do matter. High Fidelity reveal cables, Kubala Sosna Elation and Clarity Cable Natural. I’m having a listening session where all of them is doing a great job. I’ve had cables that were cheaper in my system but a nicely priced cable that matches your system is a must.  I’m not here to argue what I’m not hearing because I have a pretty good ear.  I’m enjoying these three brands today and each is presenting the music differently but very nicely. Those who say cables don’t matter. Get your ears checked.  I have a system that’s worth about 30 to 35k retail.  Now all of these brands are above 1k and up but they really are performing! What are your thoughts. 
calvinj
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.

Yes, the photograph analogy is good. No one as far as I know in music or film claims that they can improve upon the original recording. This is why the provenance of the recording is so important in remastering. The earlier the copy, the better.

What they can do is to manipulate the original so that it looks/ sounds different. And that’s exactly all what some cables do.
There's been a lot of discussion about recording on past threads with recording engineers already weighing in on this topic. Some say it's all bunk and some say otherwise. Some even say that when budget allows, some studios opt for better cables than originally used. 

There was even a link that showed where one studio went with Nordost cables and were impressed with the improvement. But all of that can be discounted as some kind of quid pro quo, couldn't it?

I don't know how many times this topic can come up but it will continue to do so as long as some here have an axe to grind.

All the best,
Nonoise
It will. Some have an axe to grind. There are those of us that know that they make a difference based on the ability of your system to be resolving and transparent