cleeds,
That's obviously why I wrote: "In the spirit of exchanging anecdotes."
I have tried upmarket AC cords in my system (e.g. various Shunyata)
and a couple didn't seem to make any noticeable difference, but one (the most expensive!) did seem to alter the sound of my system. But then I blind tested it against a $15 AC cable and it turned out I could not distinguish between them. It was a nice lesson on the strength of sighted bias and saved me some money ;-)
As to the anecdotes I mentioned: I agree nothing can be reliably demonstrated that way. But that doesn't mean they can't be suggestive.
Like many here I've heard innumerable set ups with super high end cabling. And in my extensive recent speaker auditioning, inevitably the speakers are using expensive cabling of all sorts. Yet I find the sound of my system easily competitive.
Similarly, I've heard speakers I have owned, that I've sold to audiophile friends, used with the standard-grade cables I tend to use, and then hooked up to cables even up to the highest end Nordost, Crystal cables, etc. And I did not detect any revelation, anything elevated about the performance of the speakers whose sound I knew very well having owned the very pairs.
Again, that of course is not all variables controlled.
But it is suggestive, in a personal experience way, that the high end cables are not acting as a significant variable. Whatever they are doing seems dominated by other concerns, e.g. acoustics, speakers etc.
And it suggests one doesn't *need* to spend a lot on cables in order to have sound competitive with high end systems in which many thousands of dollars were dedicated to the cabling.
