It Pegged the Needle on My "BS Meter". Now, I'm A Believer. Ever Happen to You?

Two instances come to mind.

One: I bought some 14 gauge speaker cables, 12', "pure copper wire", banana plugs each end - sounded terrible, totally threw a wet towel over the sound (Rotel and Paradigm gear). Went back to the spooled speaker wire. Sounded way better. Cables matter. Hmm. Heard the debate for years. Heard the difference myself.

Second, listened to a very high-end system Stenheim speakers and CH Precision gear. A/B tested James Taylor's vocals with/without a small weighted plate on top of the CD transport. Clearly smoother highs with the plate on top. Not that I'll ever drop $300K on a system, but I certainly heard the difference.

@patrickcarey Following up on your cable journey, any way to estimate or better yet know, which speaker cables will sound good with which gear? Goes for interconnects too. I have Kimber speaker cables, Ascent series, and they sound good but I fell into them and would like to find cables that may take the edge off the ribbon tweeter. Whaddya think? Trial and error or is there a way to figure it out?

Yeah, great question.   I stayed with AQ as a brand and tried a number of their cables, both interconnects and speaker cables. 

I have heard enough to know now that , for example, the AQ 'water' cables do roll off slightly.. or maybe it's the more textured presentation of the top end.  I've had some mogami rca cables that really rolled off the top end, but also threw a wet blanket over the speakers.  Usually, however most want more detail and texture.  So, I think it's really tricky to use cables to try and tune your system.  

Still, having said that there are some cables I prefer on different systems in my house.  I have an Arcam SS the avr 850 paired with Focal 936 and that system needs more detail and air as the arcam is pretty dark, so AQ work well there.

In my music room I have atc scm11s which are not especially extended on the top end.  And, in my office I have some tubes, and they don't need a rolloff either. 

I wonder if you are hearing a ringing or are otherwise unhappy with the top end you maybe should be looking at your amp + speakers.

I can suggest one cable, and you could try it and make sure your vendor has a return policy so if you don't like it, you can get your dollars returned.  That cable is the AQ coffee interconnect.  

Again, system tuning with interconnects is tricky, and usually results in subtle changes at best... If your system is sibilant, well maybe it's the system.  
 

I love the comment about this being a cohesive group. Yes it can be a bit of an echo chamber.  

I would say that the converse has happened to me more:  that I expected/hoped for a great improvement and instead found the difference to be subtle if there was one at all.  

But, often times, I will at some point thereafter decide that there was an improvement.  It's hard to know for sure with auditory memory and all the variables.

That's why I think the audio hobby is truly a journey or a series of them.  There may actually be no end destination - i.e. what you had in the middle was just as good, but different, and what you're really doing is meandering around rather than ascending some quality curve.  But it's all about the journey...just enjoy each part of it.

I had 2 different epiphanies that linger on in memory:

• First time I heard a tube amplifier (Music Reference RM-9). It immediately became clear what solid state wasn't doing; and
• First time I heard a non-oversampling R2R DAC. Total paradigm shift. It took less than 5 minutes to change everything I believed about digital music