Eldartford - assuming ideal square pulses spikes/distortions will happen to every pulse, but in reality signal has jiiter all the way thru with electrical noise etc. Imagine signal with slightly different rise time from bit to bit and cable with mismatched characteristic impedance. This will result in creation of staircases (transmission line efect) different at different bits since slew rate is different. Different shapes of different bits will be converted to jitter. Cable with perfectly matched characteristic impedance won't produce jitter in this scenario.
Second possibility is noise. Imagine shielded digital cable in the presence of electrical noise. Amount of jitter (caused by limited slew rate + noise) will depend on quality of shielding and will be different for different cables.
Third possibility - limited bandwidth. There is inherent noise on the top of digital signal (power supplies etc). Cable with limited bandwidth will reduce rise time and make this noise "visible" to receiver (gate will recognize level at different times on the slope of rising signal). Perfect cable with very high bandwitdh won't reduce slew rate and noise won't be visible.
I suspect that cable experts might bring many more explanations - I'm not an expert. It is, in my opinion, much more difficult to explain why power cables help with imaging but I don't question that they do. Audio is very subjective thing. How one knows that other person only "thinks" he hears difference? Trying to find scientific reasoning is a noble thing but we shouldn't question experience of others.
Second possibility is noise. Imagine shielded digital cable in the presence of electrical noise. Amount of jitter (caused by limited slew rate + noise) will depend on quality of shielding and will be different for different cables.
Third possibility - limited bandwidth. There is inherent noise on the top of digital signal (power supplies etc). Cable with limited bandwidth will reduce rise time and make this noise "visible" to receiver (gate will recognize level at different times on the slope of rising signal). Perfect cable with very high bandwitdh won't reduce slew rate and noise won't be visible.
I suspect that cable experts might bring many more explanations - I'm not an expert. It is, in my opinion, much more difficult to explain why power cables help with imaging but I don't question that they do. Audio is very subjective thing. How one knows that other person only "thinks" he hears difference? Trying to find scientific reasoning is a noble thing but we shouldn't question experience of others.