The Science of Cables

File under just sayin’ eh.

...Bertrand Russell once said: “The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that the foolish are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

One part of which refers to real practitioners of science, the other to those who play scientists on the interwebs.

It makes very little sense to talk about what a recording studio or audio engineer does wrong. It’s too late to change that. The only system that makes sense to talk about is the home system. To answer the OP directly, it’s not really true that “we have little scientific evidence why cables sound the way they do.” Specifically, we have a tremendous amount of empirical evidence that cables sound the way they do. Listening testimony is empirical evidence. It is perhaps more powerful than measurement evidence. It is illogical to declare that a hobby that is largely subjective is strictly objective. There is strong empirical evidence that,

* cables sound different
* cables suffer break-in
* cables are directional
* cables are system and application dependent to some extent
* cryogenics improves cable performance.

Finally, there are many examples of recording studios that did employ high end electronics, microphones and cables. Mapleshade, Moment!, Water Lilly, probably Mobile Fidelity, and others. These days who knows?

And there is the example of Bob Ludwig, a master in the pro field and with much more than just a lick of audiophile in his method.

. During a recent interview with mastering legend Bob Ludwig of Gateway Mastering for the 3rd edition of The Mastering Engineer’s Handbook, he mentioned that he rewired his entire studio with Transparent Cable and both he and his clients were astonished at the improvement in sound.

Bob Ludwig: My letter to Harry acknowledged that early on, when I was first mastering records, it wasThe Absolute Sound that kept the concept of the highest quality sound in the forefront of my thinking. It spurred me on to investigate circuit designs better than the "stock" circuits offered by professional gear manufacturers, high-end cables, power supplies and especially high end speakers and amplifiers. So the influence of The Absolute Sound on me caused me to look for better audiophile solutions to create great sound which in turned produced better sounding music to the millions of people who played the result of my work. Competing against facilities like Doug Sax’s The Mastering Lab opened my ears as well as Doug was really the first mastering engineer I know of who really had a handle on high-end sound along with his brother Sherwood.

and I use the top-of-the-line Transparent Audio speaker cable. I use Transparent Audio cable throughout the studio; we probably have a few kilometers of it installed in my one mastering room, three production rooms and DVD-authoring room.

The main key is the room itself. I tried to make it as acoustically perfect as possible.

cleander, If I read your comment correctly in your last post, I believe you may be referring to the subjective perception of the efficacy of Schroeder method in more modest systems. 

I assert that there is an absolute relationship in terms of performance, that a higher end rig, a more capable system, will always benefit/reveal relatively more than a mid to lower end system.  YMMV 

Just because you might have a higher resolving rig does not mean it will necessarily reveal an x-fold increase in SQ by virtue of placing an SM interconnect assembly into such a system that exceeds that experienced in a lower-end system with the same SM interconnect assembly. Which has the greater improvement, a lower-end system that has a 50% improvement in perceived SQ or a high-end system that has a 20% improvement in perceived SQ?