For years I have followed various forums discussing this topic. I recently upgraded my cables spending way more than I ever thought I would and I don’t know if it was money well spent but it made an enjoyable difference. Interestingly, on a CD I listen to frequently, there is one single piano note that has always been kind of jarring to my ears. It went away with the new cables. The volume stayed the same but the part that annoyed me was gone. In that particular instance I am 100% convinced I could tell the difference in any blind test between my old cable and the new one.
The other thought I have had on this subject is that some people just notice nuance and subtlety more. Or, it is more important to their listening experience. This occurred to me after playing music (drums) with a particular bass player. He would listen to a part on a recording and when he played it, I noticed it wasn’t quite the same. I don’t play bass so I can’t tell you what was different. The important thing is HE couldn’t notice the difference and insisted he was playing exactly like the recording. After that I realized that was a constant differentiator with other musicians I played with. The good players had a nuance and dynamic subtlety to their playing that others didn’t. At first I thought that was just because they had better technic and practiced more. And that was partly true. But the reason they had better technic and practiced more was because they could hear the subtly and nuance in other excellent musicians and wanted to achieve that. Those like my bass player friend, never noticed that nuance and never tried to achieve it. I could be way off base but I have an unscientifically proven feeling that it’s not so much what audiophiles hear as what they notice. Just like two people can walk into a room and notice or not notice very different things. So, I also think it is quite possible that whatever is being tested by the experts is missing something - maybe because these testers don’t notice what others may hear so have no understanding what to test for.
Again - these are my very unscientific thoughts on the subject. I clearly hear the difference in cables just like I can hear a difference in the same tube manufactured by a different company. Some I find musical, others I don’t. How does an engineer measure ’musical’ in this context?
