To All Cable Deniers, 1 Very Simple Question.

If someone asks about a cable are only positive comments to be allowed? There are some inconvienient truths about cables that should be known before spending rediculious amounts of money. I see that as constructive criticism for consideration.

 "improvement thru placebo effect is still improvement"  Good for you!!! Glad your happy!!    but the problem is... trying to convince other people that your fantasy is real, when it's not.

“but the problem is... trying to convince other people that your fantasy is real, when it's not.”

@gdaddy1 - The only people with that problem sell cables for a living. Otherwise, who cares what others think?

@bigtwin   Making sense of it is always helpful and narrows down the choice not to mention saving money.

As for "improvement thru placebo effect is still improvement" quote - you hear what you hear.  Blind test is to prove to others, that you can hear the difference.  As for me - I can hear big difference in speaker and interconnect cables, but not in power cables, so far.  Is it "negative placebo effect"?  Is it the fact that my gear is plugged into conditioner? or perhaps because my amp and DAC, both have line and load regulated SMPS built in?  It is also possible that change with power cable is too subtle for my aging ears.

Saying that you cannot hear the difference is as bad as saying you should hear the difference, calling people "Nay-sayers". 

When we hear the difference it's always helpful to understand why, before posting that other should buy same cable.  USB cable, like any other cable connected to DAC can inject noise into DAC, affecting sound, but purity of copper in data carrying wires has absolutely nothing to do with it, not only because it is digital data transfer, but also because it does not come in real time.  Particular S/Pdif coax cable can work great in one system (exact impedance matching), but might be bad in another.  Recommending them is silly IMHO.

 

Craving some attention @samureyex ?

what’s your point with this thread?

I think the problem is that people always ask the wrong questions or ask them with the wrong potential answers in mind.

A better question would be can a difference in conductor materials make a difference audible to the ear?  If you hear a difference is it because said conductor sound different or is it because their properties cause the circuit to behave in such a way that you hear a difference?

Now, in my own experience I can swap out electrolytic capacitors in a signal path for films, and I absolutely hear a difference. But is this because difference in dielectric makes an audible difference or because the way it makes the circuit behave makes a difference?

Personally, I dont care; I just appreciate the difference.  I found long ago that experimenting on ones own is best because we all hear differently, and I wasn't making any progress listening to others tell me what I should not hear.

Same situation arose when people kept telling me that with my particular pair of headphones I should not need more than tens of milliwatts because of their efficiency, and yet the higher the power of the amp I ran them on, the better they sounded, and all their till-then trademark insufficiencies disappeared.  Now, one could argue that it was simply due to a better designed amplifier, and not the wattage it could supply, but even if one accepted that as a given, it still resulted in better sound.  So telling me not to pursue higher power was still bad advice because it still yielded a better experience.

As far as power cables making a difference,  I'd say they mostly do not.  But then you could have situations where the power was dirty enough that changing cables would never have shown a difference.  My apartment runs entirely off a single 20A breaker, and it made a noticeable improvement when I put my listening rig on a large power conditioner.  Maybe now, I should try different power cables.  But I'd rather change things that absolutely make a large difference,  such as crossover capacitors / resistors and bypass caps, etc.