Do speaker cables really make a difference ?

@thyname, +1.

@thyname in all honestly for the life of me I cannot understand why this cable issue is still so controversial in 2023.

I use home brew horn speakers. They were not made by an engineer, don't use expensive drivers, and even tho they bring me a lot of pride and pleasure they are far from having the perfect flat curve or the perfect phase / impulse response. Worse, the room in which they are currently used is a nightmare which I'm slowly trying to deal with. Well, even with all those flaws, differences in cables are so obvious that some cables I have tried barely stayed a week in the system, others led me to re-think the positioning of the system, others highlighted faults in my electronics in a way that had me reconsider that side of things, and so on.

Cales I currently own (or have tried for an extended period of time) include:

- generic 12 gauge OFC multistrand (lack of definition, a bit mushy, exaggerated sibilance, veiled midrange)

-generic silver plated OFC multistrand, 12 gauge (very bright, highlights high mids / low treble in a very artificial way, no real definition or transparency)

-QED "Qudos" original (12ga oFC multistrand with Teflon insulation) much better than the two generic cables, but not neutral nor really transparent, a bit colored, would suit many low cost systems well by adding some "meat on the bones")

-Leedh cable from the 1990's (these came with a pair of Leedh Nazca speakers whose tweeters needed a fix, speakers belong to a friend of mine but have spent many months at my place due to my friend moving to a different place): solid core OFC wire, twisted: more precision, but very dry and unmusical when tried in my system

-Belden 9497: bought that one because it is supposed to do marvels with horns, nice at low levels with great insight into the recording, brings out details, but ragged and rough at high SPLs

-My current cables: fake Nordost Odin from China, individually teflon insulated silver plated OFC solid cores, spiral geometry (completely different from the genuine Nordost cable which is flat): smooth and open, subtle "luminosity" without harshness, wide imaging, took ages to burn in (that was EXTREME and I almost threw them away at some point but I'm glad I didn't)

all those cables sound VERY different. It's IMPOSSIBLE not to hear it. And none was really expensive. The fake Odin is definitely more expensive than Belden but still nowhere near as expensive as true high-end cables. Those are all cheap cables in the grand scheme of things.

I wonder if any of the non-believers ever tried, as an experiment, to wire their speakers with cable A on left channel and cable B on right channel. Choose two cables with different materials and construction, and then see if you can get a coherent, well centered stereo image. Good luck with that!

Your opinion is the only one that matters. For me and my system- it did make a significant difference. 

In the last couple of weeks I tried set of Micca 14 cables after reading great reviews of them with some comparing them to $1,000 cables in their systems.  I spent about $60 on two 6’ sets because I have a switch in my cables to support my home theater setup.

I enjoyed the sound of the Micca 14 cables as they had essentially no glare/harshness and were truly easy to listen to  The trade off was in the clarity and detail and the deep bass lost its definition  Sometimes when doing comparisons I don’t have the expected response when I swap back to the baseline. In this case, it was music to my ears.  I strongly prefer my Blue Jeans Cable 10AWG speaker cables in my system.  I lean towards clarity over warmth, but did appreciate the total lack of edginess with the Micca14 cables  

I learned early in life that cables do matter. An elementary school friend of mine and I used to make backyard walkie-talkies with two tin cans and some kite string. I found that more expensive kite string sounded better than regular kite string. I never tested to see whether or not the name brand vegetable cans sounded better than the off brand cans. As an adult, I connect my Personas with 12 gauge oxygen free copper wire. That sounds as good as any other wire I’ve tried.