What type of cables make the most difference

8th-note, I appreciate your explanation of the trouble you have hearing differences in cables. I have a few suggestions based on my principles for building superior systems. 

Ignore break in or settling. You will not be able to ascertain reliably a difference in sound over longer periods of time. To the others on this thread, I am not interested in arguing my advice. 

Second, work with entire sets. There are confounding variables such as two different brands of cables which are made similar, i.e,, similar conductor and AWB, which will sound similar. The characteristics of cables are far more discernible when used in sets. A great deal of the arguments about cables could be laid to rest if people would compare sets rather than individual cables. 

Finally, regarding your claim, "I think it's very enlightening that nobody has produced a controlled ABX test that shows that listeners can identify different cables when they don't know which they are listening to. If anyone on this thread knows of such a test please provide a link," you are speaking with a reviewer who voluntarily subjected himself to ABX using the Van Alstine ABX Comparator. I included cables in the testing to see if I could reliably select the proper cables, and I did. I am forbidden as a reviewer to put a link there, but you can find the article if you conduct a search for "Douglas Schroeder Van Alstine ABX" or similar.

If you come up with excuses why you will not accept my findings in the article, then know that I have no interest in debating my findings.  

The answer is none. They all sound the same, save your money and just buy decent quality and you’ll be fine. When people start talking about $100 apiece you’re getting taken advantage of

@douglas_schroeder I took the bait and googled "Douglas Schroeder Van Alstine ABX". I found tube equipment tests that you passed, but no cables. Different sounds of tubes are rather uncontroversial.

So the statement of no passed ABX tests for cables stands. A fortiori, as those results were posted on a message board, not published in a peer-reviewed journal. The latter is still the minimum standard for scientific demonstrations. You would also need to provide p-values for your results. For instance your 5:3 results have a p-value of 0.6, so are utterly non-significant. Even 7:1 is not significant. Only 8:0 is, at p = 0.02, but will have a significant Type II error associated with it because of low sample size. And as you did multiple songs, the multiple comparison issue arises as well (Bonferroni correction). But I digress ...

@raysmtb1 +1  

oberoniaomnia,

The Van Alstine ABX Comparator review is comprised of three parts. You seem to have looked only at the first, regarding amps. The third part of the review is where I discuss testing cables. Please note the results obtained when using the ABX Comparator to test cables are dramatically different than with amps. 

I've been upgrading mine this year. I have found that power made the biggest improvement and I bought 3 of them. More than subtle. I tried them for a month before I bought them so it wasn't a case of "these only sound good because I paid for them". I didn't expect them to make a difference.

Then speaker because the speaker cable I tried was worse than what I have now and shipped it back. Also not subtle but not as much as the power cables.

Interconnects - more subtle, but there. I just replaced (tried some) earlier today.