DO CABLES REALLY MATTER?

“The above average listener would have a very hard time discerning the difference 50% of the time. “

What at about the other 50%?! And you seem to forget that everyone here is waaay above average listener....We hear things that even cats and dogs fail to hear. Ask anyone here with a cat or a dog at home.

By no coincidence 50% is exactly the probability the Cable is inserted in the wrong direction. 

50% of the time is no better than guesswork.

If we experienced listeners need just the right conditions, at the perfect time of the calendar moon, when all our faculties are working optimally to strain to distinguish better than 50% between a $1 and a $1000 cable in an unsighted test, wouldn't we be better off spending our money elsewhere?

Like say loudspeakers, where the difference between a $300 and $3000 pair could be easily identified by almost anyone >90% of the time unsighted.

Bear in mind also that a $1000 pair of speakers with a $1 cable will be far superior to a $100 speakers paired with a $1000 cable to everyone except cable manufacturers and dealers maybe. 

How about putting your money where it counts? In real sonic gains and not in dealer's pockets. A good dealer is an enthusiast, not a pickpocket and deserves our full support. But they are hard to find so if anyone mentions costly cables, then that's the time to leave.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I like the solid core concept for reasons I can’t remember, so for years speaker and ICs have all beed solid...now it’s AQ speaker wire (for many years Type 8 and recently Rocket biwire), and inexpensive Morrow ICs replacing all but the sp/dif digital signal cables (some used but very cool solid silver AQs from streamer and CD player to the DAC). I like Morrow cables as they seem to be relatively transparent, as they say. The do say that don’t they?

cd318,

It’s always struck me as telling that audiophiles/reviewers/cable manufacturers will describe these awesome so-obvious-you-are-deaf-if-you-can’t-hear-it changes made by a given cable.

But when you ask people to identify the cable when they aren’t personally swapping the cables so they don’t know which is which, suddenly you get "but you need such a Highly Resolving System to pick up these differences...otherwise they are too subtle to hear....and how in the world do you expect me to pick out these subtle difference reliably under SUCH STRESSFUL conditions as a blind test???!!!

Seems a sort of wanting things both ways: obvious differences that skeptics must be deaf not to discern; differences then become so subtle that the mere addition of blind controls make the differences impossible to reliably discern.



*(That’s in regards to many typical replies to skeptics suggesting blind tests for cables, where such cable-loving audiophiles reject blind testing. That’s not to say that blind testing automatically invalidates all claims of cable differences. Although one can find numerous examples of blind tests that did not support cable differences, there are also some that suggest people heard differences).