Do different wires sound different? Sure. The "WHY" is a longer answer. First: the same set of wires may sound different on a different amp. That's the big clue!
Second: Amp designers fall into two broad categories. There are the "My Amp Is Perfect" school; and the other is the "No Speaker Is Perfect, I'll Help You Out" school.
The first group is sure their design is the finest available. If it doesn't sound good, it's somebody else's fault. The connections and the speakers are your problem, not the amp builder's.
The second group wants to try to make the speaker's movements perfectly match what comes into their amp's inputs. This means they have to find out what the speaker is actually doing. They monitor the output signal and compare it to the signal coming into the amp.
You have probably heard of cheap intercom systems where you talk into the same speaker that the other person's voice comes out of. A speaker and a microphone have a lot in common. Your speaker "hears" everything that goes on in the room. That means that when your speaker is not being asked to do anything, and something makes a sound in the room, a signal appears at it's terminals. It's a very small signal, but it's there. So if your speaker moves when it's not being driven, it actually generates a signal matching whatever sound is in the room. It is also true that when a speaker IS being driven, but its motion in NOT a pattern that matches its driving signal - such as when a woofer's inertia cause it to accelerate slowly or its inertia carries it farther than the input signal requires, it generates a signal representing the error. We'll call it the error signal.
A clever amp designer can use that error signal to cause the amp to produce an equal and opposite signal to cancel out the unwanted motions of the speaker. BUT the error signal has to make it back to the amplifier in good shape. Does it have to go backwards through the crossover network? Have you seen how elaborate some crossovers are? Some crossovers have resistors in them because they are driving speakers of different efficiency. That will easily distort the accuracy of the error signal! Of course, it has to get through the wire that connects the amp to the speaker without further alteration. Quite an elaborate journey, in many cases.
Have you read reviews of simple, single driver speakers? Or speakers using a single capacitor and a single inductor in the crossover? Reviewers talk about clarity, transparency, and a lifelike quality to the sound. Why? Because the amp could help out in correcting the speakers mistakes! One amp, two wires, one driver - that's all! That's why systems with electronic crossovers feeding one amp per driver can sound so good. That's why shorter wires are better than long ones.
If an amp doesn't seem to care what speaker wires it feeds; it's because it's not "listening." Designers of the first school think that it's not their job to worry about the loudspeaker's performance. Those other guys are speaker people. He is an amp designer and that's that. If the speaker designers do their job right, his amp will make them sound their best. But, wouldn't it be nice if they cooperated - the speakers and the amp? But wait! OOOPS! Perhaps, if the crossover's complexities and the wire's capacitance and inductance altered the error signal, things might not go so well and the error signal might not arrive showing the true state of the error, so the correction the amp does is itself erroneous and as it goes pack to the speaker it gets corrupted again and an even less accurate error signal goes back to the amp - things could get worse. A lot worse!
So, audiophile A lends his "Simply Superior" speaker wires to his pal, audiophile B who tries them out and says, "These cables sound terrible on my system!" an argument may develop. They may not notice that they use different integrated/power amps, not to mention different speakers, in their systems. So now you know why there are so many discussions about speaker cables, many from people who are absolutely sure they are correct. Rather sad really; they just lack experience. They may have married the first person they kissed. They are certainly unaware of what is involved in the process of delivering electrons to speaker coils/activating elements in the real world. As a friend of mine once told me, "Keep your mind and you bowels open. That's the secret of a good life." Happy Listening!
Second: Amp designers fall into two broad categories. There are the "My Amp Is Perfect" school; and the other is the "No Speaker Is Perfect, I'll Help You Out" school.
The first group is sure their design is the finest available. If it doesn't sound good, it's somebody else's fault. The connections and the speakers are your problem, not the amp builder's.
The second group wants to try to make the speaker's movements perfectly match what comes into their amp's inputs. This means they have to find out what the speaker is actually doing. They monitor the output signal and compare it to the signal coming into the amp.
You have probably heard of cheap intercom systems where you talk into the same speaker that the other person's voice comes out of. A speaker and a microphone have a lot in common. Your speaker "hears" everything that goes on in the room. That means that when your speaker is not being asked to do anything, and something makes a sound in the room, a signal appears at it's terminals. It's a very small signal, but it's there. So if your speaker moves when it's not being driven, it actually generates a signal matching whatever sound is in the room. It is also true that when a speaker IS being driven, but its motion in NOT a pattern that matches its driving signal - such as when a woofer's inertia cause it to accelerate slowly or its inertia carries it farther than the input signal requires, it generates a signal representing the error. We'll call it the error signal.
A clever amp designer can use that error signal to cause the amp to produce an equal and opposite signal to cancel out the unwanted motions of the speaker. BUT the error signal has to make it back to the amplifier in good shape. Does it have to go backwards through the crossover network? Have you seen how elaborate some crossovers are? Some crossovers have resistors in them because they are driving speakers of different efficiency. That will easily distort the accuracy of the error signal! Of course, it has to get through the wire that connects the amp to the speaker without further alteration. Quite an elaborate journey, in many cases.
Have you read reviews of simple, single driver speakers? Or speakers using a single capacitor and a single inductor in the crossover? Reviewers talk about clarity, transparency, and a lifelike quality to the sound. Why? Because the amp could help out in correcting the speakers mistakes! One amp, two wires, one driver - that's all! That's why systems with electronic crossovers feeding one amp per driver can sound so good. That's why shorter wires are better than long ones.
If an amp doesn't seem to care what speaker wires it feeds; it's because it's not "listening." Designers of the first school think that it's not their job to worry about the loudspeaker's performance. Those other guys are speaker people. He is an amp designer and that's that. If the speaker designers do their job right, his amp will make them sound their best. But, wouldn't it be nice if they cooperated - the speakers and the amp? But wait! OOOPS! Perhaps, if the crossover's complexities and the wire's capacitance and inductance altered the error signal, things might not go so well and the error signal might not arrive showing the true state of the error, so the correction the amp does is itself erroneous and as it goes pack to the speaker it gets corrupted again and an even less accurate error signal goes back to the amp - things could get worse. A lot worse!
So, audiophile A lends his "Simply Superior" speaker wires to his pal, audiophile B who tries them out and says, "These cables sound terrible on my system!" an argument may develop. They may not notice that they use different integrated/power amps, not to mention different speakers, in their systems. So now you know why there are so many discussions about speaker cables, many from people who are absolutely sure they are correct. Rather sad really; they just lack experience. They may have married the first person they kissed. They are certainly unaware of what is involved in the process of delivering electrons to speaker coils/activating elements in the real world. As a friend of mine once told me, "Keep your mind and you bowels open. That's the secret of a good life." Happy Listening!