Two questions to make you mad.

Quite the broad brush, you're painting this picture with.

Good questions. And I’m hardly even fuming… ;-)

1. We need good cables because they make a difference. Anyone that is skeptical of this should try and small number of different cables and see which they prefer. Viola, you’ll know there’s difference whether you can explain it empirically or not. So pick the ones that sound best to you.

2. I don’t expect my 2 channel system to play as if it were live music because that’s just not possible. It is not live. It will never be. Although it may sound very, very good and provide a lot of enjoyment to the listeners. A painting of pipe is not a pipe.

"We need good cable because they make a difference" @jpan 

There are two types of cables, good ones and bad ones. It is extremely easy to make good ones from cable and parts you can get online. Adding a fancy casing and jacking the price only make a difference in your head.

@donavabdear 

Is absolutely right. Audiophiles suffer from two distinct diseases, the Mark Levinson disease and the Dan D'Agostino disease. In Mark Levinson the price is increased to make it sound better. In the Dan D'Agostino disease if it looks better it sounds better. Affliction with either causes severe economic and psychosocial disruption. These people are extremely easy to take advantage of so you see companies like Synergistic Research that exist purely to take advantage of this population when in reality their products are garbage, totally non functional.