Why Do Cables Matter?

Lot of words that mean nothing, sort of debate garbage. If you have the right size pure copper wire with well made conductive ends that’s as good as it gets. Adding boutique C..p, rolling it flat, making it pretty on and on does nothing except teach others to spell placebo. Measurable tests don’t show an actual difference, A/B testing totally subjective, inconsistent, what’s left bragging rights and depleted resources. Let’s find consistent proof, measurable / infallible crowd approval, again this thread does nothing for either. 

So many opinions here based on little to no life experiences.  Learning comes from listening and thinking, never from talking.  You can read a book about swimming but until you watch someone swim and jump into a lake yourself, you have no idea what swimming is.

I’ve seen cables move.  When hundreds of amps going through a wire it wants to standup straight.  That wire gets rigid.  Wires heat up as current passes through them.  As the wires heat up they move.  It’s called thermal expansion.  Go read about that.

Many of the audiophile wires on the market look pretty and that is all they are good for.  You may or may not hear an improvement.  I bought some bi-wire speaker cables for my HT setup years ago to replace my old Monster Cable speaker wires.  I didn’t hear a difference.  I was out a couple of hundred dollars but at least the new speaker wires look cool with 4 banana plugs in the back of each speaker.  For HT purposes I have great sound.  For some reason I do not obsess with the sound like I do with my stereo system.  I’m more concerned about the picture.  Maybe that’s because I grew up with a 19” B&W TV.  So I don’t see myself as someone who wants to hear a difference because I spent some money on a wire with two connectors attached.  I typically audition with the mindset that I could use that money to buy a sports car or a boat (well down payment is all really) rather than on a cable.  I don’t tell people what I spend on cables.  I think it is nuts myself but at some point you are either all in or you are out.  Don’t buy an expensive preamp and then leave a $5 power cord on it and expect it to perform at its best.

I have watched some tear downs of “high grade” cables on video.  Not surprising that many brands are just fluff.  They might really be OCC copper, who knows?  But the dielectrics and terminations matter as much as the wire and many of these wires are not well engineered.  The good brands and the well engineered cables are expensive.  People come across some good deals in cables here and there.  But as always it is caveat emptor.  We don’t have gov’t oversight of the cable industry so it is up to all of us audiophiles as a community to find those gold nuggets in cables.

tonywinga

You are absolutely correct! There are many, many Gold nuggets in cables/cords. I have enjoyed watching your Audio journey over the years. Enjoy the fruits of your Labor.

Happy Listening!

@elrod

+1

Find a reputable and experienced audio dealer with a great listening room. Bring a few friends, and a few others with ears to do a real listening session for two hours.

Bring your highly praised and affordable Mogami interconnect cables people like to rave about for recording studios. Arrange to have some other good cables on hand.

Listen for at least an hour. Swap, listen again. Ask the group to report differences.

If you can’t hear a difference, live on with your cables, save $. Watch out for those who can hear a difference with a properly designed set of cables. They are not cheap.