Why Do Cables Matter?

@donavabdear 

Thanks for that lengthy exposition but could you just please give a direct answer to the question that I asked. A simple yes or no will suffice.

Thank you.

I don't believe the limitation is in the recording.  It is in the playback system and the ears of the listener.  One reason I say that is from my visit to Axpona 2022 in Tampa.  On Friday night a recording engineer did a seminar in the large room displaying the Acora speakers.  He had a digital version of the master recording of Night at the Opera by Queen.  The original master was analog being that it was made in the 1970s.  One of the fascinating things he said is that he can hear the splices in these old master tapes when playing them back on his stereo.  Try as I might I do not hear them.  I'm not trained to hear them.  His entire demonstration of how the mix down to two channel is made was a new experience for me and very fascinating.  

Vibration is the single most limiter to resolution.  Unwanted vibrations cause smearing.  A good example is a Scanning Electron Microscope.  The more the SEM is isolated from vibrations the better it's resolving power.  I can recall seeing my first SEM in 1980.  It was mounted on its own separate concrete pad from the plant floor and stood atop a thick cork underlayment.  Audio is the same.  The better the recording studio and its components are isolated down to the playback system and its components- including the cables then the more resolving the playback will be.  

I agree and understand your point and that is exactly how I think about it.  If say the live performance is a 10 and the studio recording is then possibly an 8, then the average system playback will be around 2.  Mid-fi might hit 4.  Hifi might hit 5-7.  Thing is, only a small subset of listeners may be able to discern the difference between a 6 and a 7.  I also understand that the live recording and the final mix down to 2 channel will not have a lot in common.  That was another interesting thing that night at Axpona.  After hearing many of the 24 tracks separately on the master tape, I tried and tried to hear many of those sounds in the 2 channel version but I could not make them out.

@yoyoyaya 

Yes

I’m saying that the audiophile view of cables is not one of science but religion. People on this forum and on YouTube along with salesmen at EXPONA

All I have to say… it’s Axpona. Get a real life dude. You are sick

@knownothing @yoyoyaya @tonywinga : you are wasting your time with this dude. Folks like this are a dime of dozens in the internet. I appreciate that, I have done that many times in the past. It’s an exercise in futility . These folks are all set. You will just waste your time and make you upset.

@tjag I think you make a good point about Paul of PS Audio, I've met him he seem like a great guy, what could make him pick another companies very expensive cables over PS Audio's own (I've bought them myself)? The answer is Paul needs to make money and he can make much more money selling Dragon cables than his own cables (especially at $34,100). Simple.

I spoke to some of the highest end cable makers at AXPONA this year they all told me the same thing they shrugged and said something like " I don't know why it woks it just does" the only exception was an old engineer at Beldon, I asked him how expensive cables between cheep PC traces, fuses, random connectors, internal speaker cable, crossovers, and on/off switches could justify expensive cables. He went off for 30 minutes about the speed of the signal, dialectrects and such. I said if the timing difference of the dialectrect was an issue why isn't the latency in digital circuits an issue? At least he had a reason no other manufacture had any idea why expensive cables made a difference.