Cables make a difference.
Anecdotal evidence/example: 40+ years ago when our small group of young enthusiasts/future engineers/tinkerers dabble heavily in audio (and the first CD came out, yeah!), we soon found ’thicker’ is better (instead of 0.7mm2 lamp cord, we splurged on 4mm2). We built our own active crossovers (found very quiet op amps, one of us was an electrical engineer), bi and tripe amped various speakers.
In our quest for better sound, we tried lots of different cables that were within out ’student budget’. One of our acquaintances family owned an electric supply company. One day, we grabbed a length of phat coax cable they use to wire up multi family and large appartment buildings for cable TV (I think RG59, but need to verify), and used them on our reference system. WE WERE BLOWN AWAY. We unlimited supply at super low price (we paid 10 cents per ft), we started to sell the cables to our network (making the connections was a bit of work).
Years later, we found that cable tested and listed in the top audiophile magazine (Stereoplay) in almost highest category of speaker cables. There was no cable NEAR that category that did not cost at least one hundred times as much (the magazine used 50 cents/ft). I actually still have a (uneven length unfortunately) section here, need to give it some serious ’re listening’. If I can’t hear the difference to my selection of roughly $3-$10/ft cables, it only means I need to get a new set of ears ;-).