What type of cables make the most difference

@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.