What do you mean by "better" when it comes to cabl

Sometimes the more expensive mousetrap is better, but certainly not always. There comes a point, after you've hit on the right things and have 'allowed' rather than 'restored' the signal through the system and you begin to to feel rather confident about your substitutions and experiments enough that you are essentially getting the best sonically and musically from your system, then yes, you can reach the point at which you can feel reasonably sure you have maximized the value your system can have for you and that further experimenting may only show you that the law of diminishing returns will begin to apply and just start to drain your wallet more than providing you with an equivalently meaningful improvement. The "best" may mean for your system and your sonic goals. Beyond that may not be much of a priority, or at least it has not been for me. But, this hobby is loaded with similar ways of chasing your own tail. Some people have chased themselves into great systems that they had never thought they would ever own and others have chased themselves right out of the hobby altogether, due to burn out.

As the first post stated, "better" is a subjective term.

My feeling is that a cable should not change the signal in any way. With that, the implication is that lesser cable has some impact on the signal and that "better" cable has less impact.

I too have heard differences in cables. Perhaps the differences I hear are due to different changes made to the signal by the different cables, or perhaps the difference is due to one cable having an impact and the other having no impact or less impact.

I don't know the science behind how cables impact the signal. Vaguely, I am aware that very long cabling can cause signal loss. Also, the inductance kind of impedance in a cable can result in high frequency losses. But I am willing to believe there can be a lot more involved. That's where I have to start believing in cable designers' ad claims. Like Cardas with his spiral cable configuration and materials selection, and AudioQuest when they used to make silver conductor cabling. (I know these two sound different.)

What is "better"? If I can hear a difference, I try to figure out which cable has done a better job transmitting without impacting the signal.

Manitunc-

all we cable guys are saying, a better synergy exists within one's system.

It's "better" if it complements your equipment.Depending on what they are made of,the inductance,capacitance,etc.varies from one cable to the next.One will bring out the best in your equipment and another will not.

I guess for me, then, the best would be the one that doesnt do anything, and gets out of the way. That way when I try different cartridges, arms and tables, I dont have to adjust the cabling to "fix" the sound. this must drive people who keep changing their system batty, or at least, broke.