Cable curmudgeon

Also a flutist (though not professional). My take on this is:

- The data on cables does not show anything that would explain audible differences between cheap and expensive cables except if the connection is bad (e.g. oxidation) or the cables are very long.

- Blind tests generally do not show that people can reliable detect differences between cables (but if you ask which one they prefer they’ll tell you).

- Virtually all of the people who sell, and most of the people who buy, expensive cables claim to hear differences.

- What and how people hear is extraordinarily impacted by cognition and context. (remember the experiment with Nigel Kennedy playing in the subway? Or all the auditory illusions where people hear very different words in songs?)

One side of this debate thinks that some people are naturally "Golden Ears" and/or that critically listening trains you to notice differences that non-hobbyists either don’t notice or react to unconsciously. The other side thinks that fools and their money are soon parted.

My take is that you buy a stereo system for nothing but pleasure. If you buy and listen to music through $10k speaker cables, and get $10k worth of pleasure out of it, you got your money’s worth, regardless of whether the positive differences you hear come from some so far undetected physical difference in the electronic chain, or from the way your cognition and your hearing interact. If not, not.

BTW, you're not Loren Lind, are you?

I wouldn’t use colored components with rolled off highs to assess any cables.

How do you know the Mac system 'failings' were not the cables? One AQ swap changed it from beautiful to beastly.

 Mac/B&W D3 combos ... simply gloss over too much detail to be useful in accurately determining the subtle yet critical differences between cables.

Not my experience at all. While not my cup of tea, Mac makes some lovely gear and stellar systems can be assembled with the right choices of LS & cables.

Whenever a customer wanted to hear the differences in cables I deferred to other more neutral and transparent electronics so the differences could be more readily heard.

Wasn't that rather pointless? Since cables interact with the hardware and the effects are largely system dependent, unless you are demoing on similar equipment and program the result could be WOW, meh or BLECH when the poor schlub gets them home... hence the burn-in scam.

Well those are just silly arguments I’m not even going to bother responding to.  Let’s just say we live on different planets and leave it at that. 

Yes good cables makes the difference, especially if you are willing to listen and open to what good cable can do.

Well those are just silly arguments

If one can make an excellent system awful w a single cable change, it stands to reason that the correct cables can make a less than stellar system much better.

Unless one subscribes to the nonsense that cables on their own have properties that do not change relative to the devices connected.

If one bothers to pay attention to impedances, cables become much more predictable.

Bottom line is cables make a difference and manufacturer hierarchy is solely $$ driven.