Are cable recommendations worth anything?

@tony1954 as to what would be the “right question,” here’s the original question...

"Can you recommend RCA cable brands that match well with Denafrips from dac to amplifier?"

Any cable under the sun can be an appropriate answer to this question because people’s individual tastes are all over the place not to mention that the answer also relies heavily (among other things) on the particular amp being used. What the hell does “match well” even mean? What matches well for one person may sound like utter crap to someone else. Case in point about the recommendations he ended up getting...

The sheer variety of "highly recommended" cables, lends me to believe that the cables are much less important to the sound than the component itself. Recommendations ran the gamut from the Tellurium Q Black Diamond cables at $1,100 CDN per metre, to the Blue Jeans cables at about $50 CDN per metre

The better and more effective way to ask the question would be to specify what interconnect (and amp) they’re currently using and what specifically they’re looking to improve upon and what aspects of sound reproduction (i.e. tonal warmth, upper octave detail, 3D soundstage, PRaT, micro/macrodynamics, etc.) are most important to them — along the lines of what @millercarbon said earlier. Then the recommendations would be more focused on what the OP was looking to actually achieve rather than being useless and all over the map. The more effort and info you put into asking a question the more targeted and effective the recommendations here will be, and the opposite is also true. Period. This poster’s question was very vague, and accordingly the responses were predictably all over the place. Like I said, garbage in, garbage out.

And BTW, just because the differences in “wires” may be lower on an absolute basis than, say, speakers, that doesn’t necessarily make them less important. That’s like saying a car’s engine is more important than the tires — silly. In the end everything in an audio system impacts its sound and performance and needs to work together within the context of a particular system and listener tastes. Discount the importance of interconnects, cables, or power cords at your own peril.

I consider cables to be the last step of a system build to satisfy a particular listening taste. Fine tuning, if you will. As for reviews, they can be somewhat useful to establish a general trend in perceived sound characteristics but, because of system and room variables, the final decision-making process should be based on evaluations in YOUR system. Let your ears be the judge! 

@raysmtb1

’Months ago I read an article about 2 scientists did a double blind study testing an expensive cable vs a coat hanger. The coat hanger won. That’s where I’m at with cables.’


Me too. For years I tried different cables, copper, silver plated, twin and earth solid core even, thick, thin, but none of them could perform the desired conjuring trick some reviewers had suggested.

Those who don’t like even the simplest blind a/b test (let alone the double blind!) might need to ask themselves what accursed sorcery occurs to highly acclaimed cables as soon as the lights are switched off.

Do they turn into coat hangers in the dark?

@douglas_schroeder mentioned that manufacturers recommendations might be worth noting. This is how I was led into first using the Linn K20 and then the extremely unwieldy Naim NAC A4.

Apparently Naim amplifiers needed special cable with high impedance to work really well. Apparently.

Or maybe once Naim fell out with Linn
(after the Scottish blagards began to encroach upon the exclusive territory of those game boys from Salisbury by shock horror, releasing their own amps) Naim thought we’ll have some of that cable action if you don’t mind.

In any case I don’t know if Naim are still insisting that users of their amps MUST use Naim cables, but I have noticed that the successor to the A4, the cleverly titled A5, just happens to be far more conventional in appearance and thus user friendly.

@soix 

You are certainly bright enough to understand that not everyone is capable of conveying the minutiae of what they are looking for as eloquently as yourself. It is also true that someone relatively new to this site probably hasn't learned how inflexible, arrogant and abusive some of the other participants are. How they overreact to anything that isn't exactly in line with their beliefs and how they believe that everyone else is an idiot. Despite this inherent arrogance, they seem incapable of just ignoring a topic, but instead they need to rub the OP's nose in it.
Sorry, but I am not a fan of this type of conduct when someone asks a legitimate question.

Aw Tony, let’s put on our big-boy pants here and get our facts straight, shall we? I wasn’t speaking to the OP of that post, rather I was trying to convey to YOU on THIS THREAD how he might have asked his question so he got a better answer.  But the fact that you don’t know why it wasn’t a good question explains a lot.  I’d never approach someone like that by being mean or dismissive, and I always try to provide sincere help to everyone I respond to here. I remember that post and probably didn’t respond, but if I did it’d be along the lines of this, which is a response I made to a similarly vague post so I could try to provide more useful recommendations to the guy...

Let’s back up a bit. What would you most like to improve upon over what you have now, and what aspects of sound reproduction are most important to you? You’ll get much more useful and targeted recommendations if you can specify these crucial things.

I have asked similar questions in response to countless threads here in an effort to provide them with more helpful recommendations. Does that sound inflexible, arrogant, or abusive to you? In the context of YOUR post I was expressing my frustration over the sheer amount of vague questions that get asked here.

Am I the only person that is confused when someone asks an open-ended question like this about cables?

So yeah, most likely you are. I think most people are not surprised that when you ask an open-ended question you’re gonna get a wide range of answers, but somehow in your surprise you’ve construed it to mean that interconnects are less important. Huh. But to answer your initial question more directly — yes, cable recommendations can be extremely helpful if the question is asked in a way that allows someone to provide a useful response. Hope this helped clear up your confusion.