Why do digital cables sound different?

gotta disagree guys. my dac/pre (accuphase dc-330) allows multiple connections between it and a transport (accuphase dp-90, in my case). i have connected between the two: 6 9's (.99999996 pure copper) coax, toslink and opitcal cables ( i can also use aes/ebu but my transport doesn't have an ouput for such a connection). with the remote for the 330, i can toggle between the connections virtually instantaneously. there's a big perceived difference among the three connections that even the uninitiated appreciate; the optical always wins. this may be one of 'em subjective/objective mysteries but, nonetheless, everybody, i mean everybody, can hear the difference among these connections. i think maybe some of our inscrutible cosmoligists are right: despite what einstein theorized, the speed of light ain't really constant.

I think that the placebo effect can be blamed for most of it. Analog cables can be very effected by the impedence match with the components they are connect to, and construction approach. Any properly functioning digital cable would be indistinguishable from any other. The only people benefiting from overpriced digital cables are the manufacturers who make them and the retailers who sell them. Let the retailer take a blind test and see if they can really tell the difference.

dtf: yeah, and i bet your wife/girlfriend is indistiguishable from nicole kidman. or is that just the placebo effect?

I have to say they DO sound different. I don't know why. They DO! I tried 4 different cheap to mid priced cable and they all sound diffrent. I am using the Music meter amd MIT T3 for DVD and CD player respectively. If you cant't tell any difference, probably your system is mid resolution or yor ears might be......

What amazes me about the cynics' justifications for not hearing differences in digital cables is, when all is said and done, the same things that made the "all (analog) cables sound the same" debate of several years ago. First of all, not everyone's hearing is as developed or sensitive as that of some. So it is possible that some simply can't and never will be able to hear these differences. More interesting however is how reluctant many are to give music, that which all of these toys are trying to reproduce, the proper respect. Music(sound) is so complex, so beautifully subtle. Is it so difficult to imagine that there are still many aspects of sound as it relates to recorded music that have yet to be properly explained or even identified? Not to me. Why do we assume that there has to be an explanation "now". The very things that make us want to listen to certain music, the emotion, the mystery; how on earth can these things be quantified? They can't be. Not yet anyway.