Dynaquest4
Thanks for your reply, similarly busy. I first started experimenting with cables in a serious way over 10 years ago in an attempt to improve a crappy system with out changing any of the boxes that I wanted to like. We are not talking high end wires here, and a lot of it was home brew, but right off the bat I heard differences. These wire related differences were not always for the better, and some cables just highlighted deficiencies in some element of the electronics they were connecting.
Fast forward to today and I now have a purpose designed and built listening room with its own dedicated power line, so a lot of factors are controlled. In my decidedly midfi system I find wire differences to be on par with changing out DACs, with descending effect of PCs, SCs, analog ICs then digital ICs, but all show noticeable changes to my ears in my system.
I am a trained scientist, but in earth sciences, not electrical engineering. In my immediate family I have two electrical emgineers working in bleeding edge aerospace and two mechanical engineers. All either musicians and/or audiophiles. Of the four engineers, one of the mechanical engineers is a complete wire skeptic. The others are more willing to accept that there are attributes of materials, design and application that can result in better perceived performance that is difficult to measure with typically available measurement equipment. Perhaps derived from designing electronic guidance systems to operate to spec in dirty emf environments, dunno cause they don't talk about it.
I think there are two areas where measurement and specs may not relate to real world experience with hifi cables. 1) things we hear like tone, soundstage and "speed" may be hard to measure, and 2) wire specifications and performance may not be conservative in dirty complicated applications behind your gear.
Bottom line, you either hear a difference or you don't, and if you don't, you have more $$ left for source material.
