Who thinks $5K speaker cable really better than generic 14AWG cable?

Ctsooner: read your post and, unfortunately, find noting there that merits further response from me.  Sorry.

I don't get it. To claim "scientific reality" as a point of view, and then state that there wasn't a "significant difference" belies the point being made.

Scientific reality would reveal the slightest of differences, and a difference is just that, a difference. To move on from that juncture, what constitutes slight to someone could be significant to someone else, especially to audiophiles who value such differences.

For me, once I've heard better, it's very hard to go back. It's in the very nature of audiophiles to want better, inch by inch if necessary. This is, after all, a ground game, and who wants to give up ground because someone else says the difference isn't worth it?

I think we're beyond the OP's value judgement argument and have progressed to simply some stating that small differences aren't worth it and I say that is simply untrue.

All the best,
Nonoise

NoNoise....significant "differences" are moot.  What is important is whether there are significant "improvements."  Science says overpriced cables are just that.  Over priced, pretty, sparkly, fat, colorful and interesting...just not accoustically effective in my opinion.

Small differences may be worth it...but given the power of expectation bias, seems most would want some measure of effectiveness beyond the overstated claims of how "good it sounded.". 

I've been reading this thread almost daily and can appreciate everyone's points of view.  Unlike some though, I do see value in ctsooner's and others' more recent posts as well.  I've posted my views previously on my own experience trying a lot of cables from dirt cheap to inexpensive to mid-priced to 'expensive' and back down the price slope several times culminating in what I use today (and the even more expensive cables I've evaluated them against).  The fact is, I've heard differences in all sorts of cables; both those I could afford and those I could not; I've settled on a combination that I truly hear the difference and that help make a musical experience that is of the type I am after.

Trust me when I tell you I am not happy about the dollars it has taken to make this journey or (no matter how much I love the current sound) what it takes to maintain or better it.  The fact does remain however that whenever I have pulled cables out of the system and gone to mono-priced or similar, sound stage collapses, imaging goes to hell and the overall musical experience suffer dramatically.  I would also ask you to trust that if I could achieve the sound I have today for less dollars spent on cables and that money put elsewhere, I definitely would.

I'm sure that this post will draw either much criticism from the cable detractors or price skeptics among you (whose opinions and points of view I do respect as I think the whole cable and high-end market is tragically over-priced by the way...) however, the truth is in the listening for me in my system (having nothing to do with what others should/do experience).

One key point that keeps hitting me squarely between the eyes about this thread though is that I see myriad references to real science, scientific method, etc...on this thread but when I read through everything carefully and objectively, I don't see real science or scientific method being utilized. I see scientific jargon being utilized to justify a point of view but little if any real science or hard test results being presented regarding cables good or bad .

***I will say for the record that I could be dead wrong in what I am perceiving here and my point of view so please know my intent in saying what I have here is not to offend anyone....

"One key point that keeps hitting me squarely between the eyes about this thread though is that I see myriad references to real science, scientific method, etc...on this thread but when I read through everything carefully and objectively, I don’t see real science or scientific method being utilized. I see scientific jargon being utilized to justify a point of view but little if any real science or hard test results being presented regarding cables good or bad."

That’s what naysayers do.  The way they’ve always done it, the way they'll always do it. You know what I’m taking about: Science cannot not allow it. You can’t disobey the laws of science. Anyone who knows science knows it. Anyone who ever took 12th grade science knows (blah blah blah). This is what naysayers have been saying for 40 years. Why on Earth would they stop now?

from Zen and the Art of Debunkery,

"Seeing with humility, curiosity and fresh eyes was once the main point of science. But today it is often a different story. As the scientific enterprise has been bent toward exploitation, institutionalization, hyperspecialization and new orthodoxy, it has increasingly preoccupied itself with disconnected facts in a psychological, social and ecological vacuum. So disconnected has official science become from the greater scheme of things, that it tends to deny or disregard entire domains of reality and to satisfy itself with reducing all of life and consciousness to a dead physics."