A butt-load spent in cables - how much improvemt?

Audiofeil states:

"Cables are system and listener dependent. It's that simple."

That sums it up as well for me. Cables, regardless of their cost, are very system dependent and subjective percentage improvement can only be subjectively quantified by the user in his own system.

Tbg wrote > "I certainly would not go so far as to say cables cannot elevate the sound to a higher level of excellence. Does this not imply a zero improvement?"

Perhaps just an issue of semantics, but a cable is not an active component. It cannot "add" anything to a signal; there is no amplification or gain and it shouldn't be shaping the frequency response or other signal characteristics.

What a cable can do is take things away; it can fail to accurately transmit the signal. It can allow EMI or RF interference to distort the signal. It can change the frequency response. It can fail to transmit the full signal strength. But it cannot make the signal "better" than when it left the source component (unless you count on the cable's deficiency to be an inverse match to a defect elsewhere in a system.)

Of course, that is an interesting approach, build a system based on combining defects and substandard performance. Not the approach one would typically think to take, but there is room for everyone in this hobby. ;-)

Mlsstl, it is semantics. Since some cables sound better they must of necessity be passing the signal better and/or keeping spurious signals out better. They are subtracting less in the first case or adding less in the second case. I don't know what this perspective adds to the discussion, however.

a cable does not sound better or worse in one stereo system or another. the stereo system may sound better or worse with one cable or another.

a cable does not change when it is inserted into one system or another. it is the same cable. how can it sound better or worse ? the cable sounds the same regardless of where it is placed. the stereo system is affected by the cable.

Again, this is semantics. What we learn is which cable sounds better in our system.