it’s a bit disturbing that, even today, there are self-identified audiophiles who ridicule those who hear differences between cables. This issue, frankly, was settled long ago.
In fact, there was a study published in MIT’s Electronic Music Journal back in, I think, the 1980s or 1990s, that documented cable-comparison testing with a double-blind methodology. I remember scanning that piece & probably could dig it up today if I had to.
The study found that that some participants could easily distinguish among cables, but others had trouble. One anonymous tester (identified only by initials "JA" (!) ) scored 100% on all tests. Better than five-zero confidence, right?
In my case, two of the three most dramatic changes to my system in the last 20 years were due to major cable upgrades -- once interconnects, once power cables. These were "quantifiable" differences to the extent that, with the old cables, I could point to the specific locations of clearly defined images around the room. After swapping in the new cables, the soundstage broadened so significantly that the images in the same recordings moved to new locations. This was repeatable and not a subtle effect. Other cable upgrades in my system, however, produced no effect that I could hear, at least before break-in.
In all these examples, the point is that not hearing a difference isn’t conclusive evidence either way of the fact that cables can matter (there could easily -- even likely -- be weaker links in the audio chain), but hearing a difference does.
My personal opinion, and again this is based mostly on "mere" personal experience, is that those who still cling to the "cables don’t matter" faith-based belief are either sufferring from confirmation error or drawing unwarranted conclusions from ad hoc comparisons.
My 2c.
