Why Do Cables Matter?

It’s all about waves. Sound waves are locked into electromagnetic waves in recording studios. At home, that same electromagnetic waves are converted back into sound waves by our electronics and speakers. The objective of our home system is to replicate that recorded electromagnetic waves. But since we’re not in a perfect world, there is no way that electromagnetic waves can exactly be reproduced. We’re dealing with degree of degradation to the original waves by the home equipment. The better the equipment, the closer we get to the original waves. So, everything in the chain matters. Electromagnetic waves are created by electrons. Cable manufacturers strive to get the electrons vibrating to perfection in order to re-create that recorded electromagnetic waves. But there is no such thing as a perfectly pure material or a perfectly shielded cable so the exact reproduction is not going to happen. We have cable makers going for OCC, high purity materials, cryro and sophisticated construction in their attempt to get as close as possible to reproducing the original signals. The closer they get the more expensive the cables becomes. At the end of the day, it’s all about you get what you pay for.

@hilde45, being involved in the hi fi industry business as well as the recording,

The term High Fidelity from my perspective means being faithful to the original recording i.e. being able to reproduce it as accurately as possible. I have to say that in the thousands of recordings in my collection there are actually very few that sound "bad". By bad I mean nasty peaky treble or obvious distortion. However, if that is what on the recording, so be it. I also have to say that in my experience of listening to quite a few audio systems, very high quality systems make less good recordings more listenable than vice versa because they present more of the music and make it easier to listen through poor recording quality.

The question of people using equalisation etc as presented in your post is complex as there could be subtractive or additive elements involved. For example if an amplifier with high levels of harmonic distortion was used, it will add harmonics to the final signal that are not present (or certainly not to the same degree) in the recording. On the other hand if someone uses a tone control to dial down a peak in the frequency range they are removing part of the signal. Or they could be using a loudness control to boost low frequencies. In that case they are not adding information, but they are making part of the signal more prominent than it is on the actual recording.

Finally, an important factor that bears mentioning is that, at the risk of stating the obvious, people's perceptions differ. Some people aren't that sensitive to frequency response errors for example and other's aren't that sensitive to timing errors. And sometimes, people's sonic values are just plain different, which is why there is such diversity in hi fi equipment.

@yoyoyaya

Thank you for your informed reply.

Since there are some situations where adding information (harmonics) is pleasing or taking away information is pleasing (equalization), then there is nothing sacrosanct about "reproducing the original information," at least at the end of the process. Because the goal is not literal reproduction but aesthetic reproduction. This is where the analogy with cooking raw ingredients holds up.

On the other hand, I can imagine the response - "Yes, ok — we need to flavor to taste. Still, at the start of the process, we want to start with the real thing -- 100%, Grade A meat. After that, you can do as you wish, but don’t compromise it before you get a chance to start cooking."

These two responses are consistent with one another. But the notion that the "original signal" should not be adjusted (adding or subtracting information) mistakes literal reproduction for aesthetic reproduction. As you say, tastes vary, and (of course), so do ears and rooms. A lot!

At the end of the day, I don't seek "faithful" or "accurate" but good sounding. It's also the case that I probably don't own the same speakers the recording was mixed on, nor the same acoustic room. Given that I cannot hope for "faithful" I will settle for "good sounding," however I can get there.

@hilde45 

There are exceptions to the "can't add information" rule such as speakers. There are very few studios that use speakers over $50k there are good reasons for that but as far as audiophiles that commonly use speakers over 50k they may be hearing things that the original recording and mixing engineers never heard. I've mentioned before I was in the studio with Al Schmitt (the greatest recording engineer ever) and his personal speakers at Capitol Studio A sounded pretty bad. I of course never mentioned that but the reason why he had more gold records over the years than anyone was because he knew the system in which the recordings worked, he didn't use much EQ he used mic placement to change the sound so there was no signal limitation. It didn't matter that he didn't have very good hearing anymore before he died. That's to say the bottleneck in his system was very large he didn't fuss with EQ, compression and limiting he left the signal as open as possible. Speakers can reproduce a signal that is larger than the bottle neck that the recording engineer ever heard but those frequencies and dynamics are not part of the mix they are  flavors that the engineer hopes don't detract from the music. As far as interconnects and speaker cables they are bottlenecks if the current audiophile ideas are correct and since they are supposedly limiting the original signal path they limit everything. That's why I say using cable more expensive than the original recording is silly. Hope that made sense. 

Why do cables matter?

Because they sound different.