Hype, Hyperbole and high price!

For what it's worth (perhaps very little), this phenomenon is nothing new, and is not confined to the audio industry. I encounter it daily in my dealing with "customer support" (that's a euphemism), bad service in restaurants and I largely avoid flying, not because of airplanes but because of the whole airport "experience." 
It is also nothing new: Paul Fussell wrote "Bad: The Dumbing of America" at least 25 years ago. He wasn't just picking on Americans- we were on the front end of the large corporate middle finger; as Fussell explained, the difference between the "hype" and the "reality" was growing as indifference, cost cutting and profit drove things. I'm not going all political here--just pointing out that we've been suffering from this for decades. In some cases, you simply can't buy a quality product at any price now- everything is disposable. 
One of the things I like about this industry is that it is still made up of small, "cottage" type manufacturers. And, there's quality out there.
Apologies for rant, but I thought it topical. 
bill hart

Mapman wrote,

"Geoff, those teletubbies would kick your invincible butt! Don’t think otherwise."

My Teleportation Tweak eats Teletubbies for breakfast. What chance do you have?

Look, let me give you some advice while we’re or least I am on the subject. If you want to be somebody and be a big star in the eyes of the Naysayers and Pseudo Skeptics and other assorted tweakaphobes, obviously something to which you aspire. Contact Better Business Bureau or Consumer Protection Agency or even AES or NASA or whoever you think the proper authorities are and report my Teleportation Tweak, the Super Intelligent Chip, Brilliant Pebbles, the Particle Accelerator, Dark Matter and/or the Quantum Temple Bell and explain to them how upset you are and that I’ve broken some unspoken rules of marketing or product naming conventions and that I’ve broken actual Laws of Science or Physics or whatever  and that even though you’re not exactly sure what those laws are, there must certainly be some!

Be sure and let us know how that works out for you.

tootles

Grm 5-6-2016
I guess I’m in over my head here, not for lack of trying... Lesson learned!

No, you’re not in over your head at all, IMO. In fact your post struck me as as a very credible recitation of your experience, and as raising some particularly intelligent questions.

Regarding "it’s a digital signal, should they not sound the same?," the reasons differences in digital cables can significantly affect the sonics of a system are technically explainable, and are well established. They relate primarily to small short-term random or pseudo-random fluctuations in the times at which the component receiving the signal detects the transitions that the signal makes between its two voltage states. That is referred to as "jitter," and will generally result to some degree in fluctuations in the timing of D/A conversion.

Among different coax or other electrical cables, the amount of jitter that will result with a given cable in a given system, at the point where D/A conversion is performed within the DAC (which is where it matters) depends on a complex (and mostly unpredictable) set of relationships and interactions between the parameters of the cable, including length, impedance accuracy, shielding effectiveness, shield resistance, propagation velocity, bandwidth, etc., and the technical characteristics of the components it is connecting, including signal risetimes and falltimes, impedance accuracy, jitter rejection capability, ground loop susceptibility, etc.

And with respect to optical cables, as you reported finding those can be beneficial due to their immunity to ground loop issues (which can significantly affect jitter, btw, as well as causing hum), but they also bring additional variables and unknowns into the mix, including the quality and various technical characteristics of the optical transducers in the two connected components.

For more than you’ll ever want to know about the subject, see the following paper by a distinguished academician and researcher:

http://www.scalatech.co.uk/papers/dunn_hawksford_1992.pdf

Note, though, that this paper was written in 1992, and arguably the issues it raises about jitter are even more critical in many of today’s systems, due to the greater resolution many of today’s systems can be expected to provide, compared to many of those of earlier times.

Good luck, and welcome to Audiogon! Not all threads here are as controversial as this one :-)
-- Al

I will never forget the day in 1979 that the “Head Monster” himself (Noel Lee) sauntered into our hi-fi store with this funny looking large gauge wire and of course donuts. What, that wire is going to “sound better” than our fabulous 18 gauge zip cord? We doubt it… It was a watershed moment/day for sure.