@audioengr
Drivel as in measurements showing the differences are insignficant? Also yes, you heard plastic optical cables as better sounding than glass because plastic ones do measure better. And also, yes, USB cables of shorter length measure better than ones or longer length, but also bargain bin USB and “audiophile-grade” USB measure near identically.
And again, any decent DAC will reduce jitter to at least below say -110dBFS, so all these differences before the DAC can indeed be ignored, unless you are cranking your amplifier above full scale.
And yes, I’ve used wire bough at Walmart and wire that was much more expensive, no difference. Getting a sufficient gauge and maybe twisted for decent runs are pretty much all that matters. And no, you don’t have to listen for days to begin to appreciate the difference, our recall ability is about 15sec to my knowledge, so if you can’t immediately hear a difference, than any difference you hear latter on is not real.
Just to point out for those that don’t know, there is $10,000 amplifier challenge for anyone who can differentiate between two amps that are level matched, operating at volumes with THD below 2%, amplifying linearly (no tubes or bass boost), etc. This has been going on for almost 30 years, and not a single person could do better than 65% accuracy (24 guesses). So if anyone believes they can hear a difference, here’s your chance to win $10K. Over a thousand people (of course the majority are fellow audiophiles) have taken it and all failed.
