Does raising speaker cables off the floor really make a big difference?

The best cable riser demonstration was at a show several years ago, perhaps RMAF. As I entered the room the demonstrator was using a foam-ish cable riser, I believe of Shunyata make, and rubbing it against the top of a CD. It was being used as an anti-static device. It worked to some degree, better than as a cable riser. 

Want to test this essentially for free?
Cardboard egg cartons. Cardboard is a great insulator for this application.
Cut each carton (discard the lid) into 4 equal sections. That gives you 3 egg holders per section.
Note the shape of your pieces, they even have ready made seating notches for your cables!

You could hose down the carpet with an industrial strength anti-static spray. If static is all you’re worried about. 

These are the type of subjects that self-reputed "Golden Ears" love.To them, it only re-enforces that they have Golden Ears, which is a psychologically-comfortable status.


I’m not talking simply about any audiophile who tries something out in his system, "hears" something he likes and goes with it. Cool stuff!Rather, I’m talking about a certain attitude, or defense-mechanism, found among some portion in the audiophile community.



It’s like psychics or spiritualists: "Oh, you can’t hear the voices of the spirits like I can? Poor thing, it must be hard to be so deficient in spiritual sensitivity!"


So the Golden Ear does some tweak "test" in the usual subjective manner, believes he hears a difference and...well...that’s that! Truth Has Been Found!



If YOU listen to the same thing and don’t hear a difference then, no it can’t be contrary evidence, it can’t be the Golden Ear could possibly be fooling himself; no, the Golden Ear’s subjective impressions method is inviolable so it MUST be some deficiency in you who "can not hear what I hear."


That’s why this always plays out with snipes against the hearing acuity of anyone skeptical of a Golden Ear claim. The Golden Eared Subjectivist assumes his own method as veridical. And since the Golden Ear usually won’t truly put his Golden Ears to controlled testing - e.g. with controls for "not peeking" to really see if he can actually distinguish what he claims. - then the Golden Ear is never faced with a true challenge to his claims.



So he can go on to his heart’s content claiming to hear whatever he/she wants, his Golden Ear status unchallenged (at least to himself/herself), with the added satisfying benefit that anyone arguing about negative results is simply hapless and hasn’t reached the GE’s "Golden Ear" status of acuity for the claimed phenomenon.


You’ll recognize these Golden Ears by the attitude that challenging their perception will rarely result in their admitting to the possibility they have fooled themselves, but rather skeptical inquiry will tend to be met with some version of: "you don’t have the ears/gear to detect it" trope.
(And, btw, I happily admit that there ARE audiophiles who believe in various tweaks, but who go to some effort to produce some rational/evidential arguments in their favor).

It’s much easier to isolate a subwoofer than speakers generally, anyway, due to center of gravity issues and subs are most likely more of a problem, you know, with the much lower frequencies so that’s where I’d put my money first - on isolating the subwoofer.