I'm not going to read through all 11 pages of this thread, but I did have a random thought and this seemed like the best spot for it...
Suppose you had two speaker designers at your disposal, and you gave them both an identical set of a woofer and a tweeter and said make me a speaker. Would you expect them to sound the same? Of course not. One might create a sealed cabinet, or an open baffle, or a bookshelf, or a floorstander, etc.
Now suppose you gave them identical cabinets also. Would you expect them to sound the same? I doubt it, they would probably design different crossover frequencies, use different capacitors, silver vs copper wire, different cabinet damping, etc.
So you specify the crossover frequency for them. Will they still sound different? Then you give them each a run of the same speaker wire. How about now? If they still sound different, at what point do the speakers sound identical?
Now suppose both designers are in a vertically integrated company like Audio Note or Bryston and you throw an amplifier into the mix and say build me a speaker and also an amp to drive them. How many components of the amp would you have to control before they sounded the same? What if I add a DAC to the mix?
If I hear Yanny and you hear Laurel, will the speakers ever sound the same to both of us? What if I use music that I like and you hate? Will you be able to tell the difference if you aren't familiar with the music?
Audio equipment is more alike than it is different. It's still a source, amp, and speakers. And yet it does sound different. My system does not sound the same as my buddy's system. At all. I know I wouldn't pass a double blind cable test, but I also know that two speakers that have the same specs don't sound the same at all. Same for amps, does a 100w Best Buy amp sound the same as a 100w Pass Labs amp?
My point is when we ask if cables matter, maybe we should instead ask what doesn't matter? We listen to systems, not cables, but the cables interact with the system just like speaker crossovers, transformers, power supplies, and everything else, not to mention the music being played. So if cables don't matter, what does matter?
