Why Do Cables Matter?

I think we should just keep kicking this horse. It’s dead so it don’t mind. Has anybody ever heard a really bad effect from a cable or connector? I have! I tried some passive line attenuators on the output of a pro level dac to lower it’s output for a consumer grade pre-amp. That sounded truly awful. It was much better to digitally attenuate. I also got pretty bad sound from some 30 foot RCA interconnects. I can’t even remember why I needed those at one time, but I’ve still got them! - You know, I think those cables had a stereo phono plug on one end and RCA outputs on another, and I was using the headphone out of an iPod into a pre-amp from across the room. A lot of problems there.

Another truly terrible sound came from trying to use y-splitters on the dac output in an attempt to mix channels. Dac didn’t like that.

So, if I can hear the effect of RCA interconnects when they are 30 feet long, maybe some people can still hear the effects at only 3 feet long. I’m really glad that I don’t hear anything that bothers me with decent 3 foot single ended interconnects. This assumes there’s nothing wacky about the impedance matching between the two devices being connected. If that’s the case, then all sorts of mayhem and cable effects may revealed.

Has anybody ever heard a really bad effect from a cable or connector?

Absolutely. Back in the early noughts, we tried a sampling of cables.

One cable sounded like we had a whole new CD collection. Pass.

The missus opined of another "That's the only wire where the clarinet sounds like a clarinet." She has perfect pitch and played clarinet.

And for the 10^10th time, some people can't tell the difference between Petrus and Plonk. Ditto HiFi...

@audphile1 I’ll add as I’d missed in my first post here a critical element - speaker positioning and distance to listening chair. This is something that I continue to be amazed with how a slight change in speaker placement can break it or make it. This of course comes together with room acoustics right after your components and before cables.

A story -

A friend of mine was super particular about this. One time I brought him over to a 55-year audio dealer with the best AudioNote systems playing. This pair of AN speakers were corner positioned, rotated inward and crossed about 1.5 foot in front of the listening position. Something neither of us had ever tried before. We listened to some old Elvis and Beatles tracks. It was quite an engaging and enjoyable listening experience. One of those times you walk away perplexed and never forget.

Naysayers.. stupid childish term, moving wires on a home sound system absolutely stupid. I’ve available 4500 A/B watts at 4 Ohms .003 thd, you can rattle glass and pound your chest but wires don’t move. S..t my 230 volt Lincoln welder at 130 amp and 20 volts won’t move wires !! Hay Maybe after my wires ‘burn in’ things will move… more laughable 💩 

Cheers

     I have one word, to express my personal view as regards the Church of Denyin'tology and it's obfuscating, classically (possibly: willfully) obtuse adherents (you know, the NAYSAYERS):

                                        floccinaucinihilipilification

                                              Happy listening!