A New Believer

To T_bone:

'I think that the debate about how well wires carry signal is to some extent kind of silly'

The so called debate is whether or not wire can change the signal. Saying it can is silly. Saying it can change sound stage and detail and Lord, let us not forget mid-bass, is down right absurd.
All this can be proven by anyone. It just requires two people, both committed to finding the truth. One to install and change cables and another to listen, for days,weeks,months, then compare notes. The peoblem would be how to prevent the listener from seeing which cable is playing.

I thnk we don't give enough importance to the role eyesight and the awareness that a component has been changed, plays in what we think we hear.

The cables I use are not expensive at all. I have another set of moderately priced speaker cables that make my set-up sound bright and steely. Am I crazy?

To Blkadr:

You are hereby charged with 'listening under the influence'(of your brain and eyes) :)

04-12-11: Antipodes_audio
If the time relationships in a sound are unnatural then the brain is quickly fatigued trying to make sense of what it hears, and the music sounds confused. If the time relationships are accurate then the brain can make complete sense of what it hears, with singers/players/instruments occupying distinct and real spaces. These time-domain issues are two-fold; signal-smearing, and phase distortions...Unlike equipment design, cable design to get accurate timbre is not tough, but time-domain accuracy is hard, and every design is a trade-off.

Antipodes audio - I agree with you about the importance of time domain performance. You may be aware of this already, but there is a significant amount of science confirming that human hearing has very sensitive temporal resolution. Many estimates place the limits of human temporal resolution on the order of microseconds, and some estimates place it as low as 5 μs. That is a remarkable level of sensitivity.

Of course, it does not necessarily follow that our extreme sensitivity to temporal differences is a significant psychoacoustic factor in audio. But like you, I believe that it is.

Having said all that, I am still unclear about what design choices in cables influence their time domain behavior. Is it the materials? The geometry? The dielectric?

I'm not asking you to give up your "secret recipe," but can you share any generalizations about the virtues and vices of various design approaches?

Thanks,
Bryon

If you can't answer the question, dazzle them with bs.