Who says cables don't make a difference?


Funny, after all these years, people still say things like "you wasted all that money on cables". 
There are still those who believe cables don't make a difference.
I once did marketing for a cable line I consider to be about the best-Stealth Audio Cables. 
One CES, I walked the rooms with the designer/owner, Serguei Timachev. He carried a pair of his then new Indra interconnects. Going from room to room he asked the room runners to replace their source to preamp IC with the Indra. There was not one that was not completely flabbergasted and said that the Indras blew away what they were using. That was the skyrocketing of Indra and Stealth. The Indra became one of the best reviewed cables ever.
Serguei now makes the Sakra-an IC that blows away the Indra!
I don't understand why some still do not value cables as much as I.
mglik
Speed, I’m quite familiar with the work psychologists have done on these sorts of things. In fact, I just used a simple example above with wine tasting where similar testing has been done blind. There are tests with many other subjects as well, and is clearly generalizable to this particular scenario.

My point quite simply is that psychological testing has already proven that your assertion that "is a not insignificant number of people who can hear differences" doesn’t mean a damn thing if you cannot demonstrate that there is a scientifically provable difference. It’s essentially a form of confirmation bias. People expect something that is more expensive to be better, and lots of tests have been done that prove this occurs in a wide range of areas. Certainly audio equipment and audiophiles aren’t immune (if anything we’re highly likely to be subject to these biases).

Industries for years have grown up around this, so that too isn’t a meaningful statement. Marketing expressly leverages this to convince people to pay more for designer brands. The difference being that how something looks, feels, etc, is entirely subjective... whereas there are scientific ways to assess current passing through a cable to produce sound.

I like cars, and I’m happy to buy a car that produces an emotional response, is fun to drive, etc. So, like I said, if you want to pay more for a cable because you THINK it sounds better, knock yourself out. But you’ve got exactly zero evidence that proves it’s anything other than what I stated above.  Meanwhile I've got quite a bit of evidence that strongly suggests it is what I'm arguing (though it's entirely possible it could be proven wrong at some point).
thyname,

I am much better than you would think.

What is a Bingo hour?
I believe that glupson.

pfhjvb0,
As stated earlier in this thread, lack of applicable cable measurements is the crux of this debate. Those that hear a difference (myself included), hear a difference. Those that don't, continually throw around the psychological placard as the reason.
Sometimes an “upgraded” interconnect cable can clearly make a sonic improvement.  For years, I had been using 35 feet long Blue Jeans/Belden interconnects between my preamp and the power amp that is located between my main speakers.   Deciding it might be worthwhile to finally replace those cables, I spent a lot of time researching name brand interconnects.  Of chief concern to me was identifying characteristics of unique cable design that the manufacturer claimed provided performance superiority over its competitors’ product offerings and, within that manufacturer’s own product line, where and why were the greatest price increases. Based on all that, I purchased Wireworld Cable’s Equinox interconnects.  Wow!  Music simply sounded better -- much more real.  For me, this was a costly investment ($2,400) not made casually.  I have no buyer’s remorse, however.  Moreover, I don’t know of another upgrade I could have made in my system for that amount of money which could have resulted in such a sonic improvement.