A butt-load spent in cables - how much improvemt?

I agree fully with Shardone that a good properly matched gear should not change presentation dramatically because of a different piece of cable.
In the 60's and 70's there were several very musical sounding systems (Thorens/Marantz/Quad ESL 57) around, while people were using ordinary... zip cords! Why should we replace cabling with super expensive stuff when there is balance in sound?

Chris

In a well-matched, ultra-low-power, single-tube, single-driver system, with clean isolated battery power (lemon/CU/ZN), ideal feng shui, purified air, properly oil-suspended granite floor slab, and fibonacci-sequenced room proportions... you really shouldn't need actual cables, as they interfere with the natural electrosonic energy path. So I've done the only sensible thing, and eliminated those damn thangs altogether. My plebian neighbor claims he can't hear the pure sound, but evidently he's never really developed his critical listening skills.

I believe the expression is "...a boat load of money..." rather than "butt-load". But wait, are you incarcerated?

Jim Davis has the right of it. However if you spend more and hear a difference, then you do, and thats all that matters! Can you imagine Mike Lavigne, with his excellent system, with lamp cord as speaker cables... He would be mortified but the vast majority in a DBX test would NEVER hear the difference. A sad but true fact. I think Randi has a million dollars for anyone who can hear the difference.

I wonder what group of people participated in the double-blinds. It may be the masses. For example in double-blind tests, the results show most people can't tell the diff between Coke and Pepsi. A friend of mine said I couldn't tell the difference on that as well as some other items. I proved him wrong in every case. I think it would be the same with cables as well.

I think it's the same with audio. My wife says she can't hear any differences in my various audio setups. I can clearly detect differences in cables alone. I found the differences became more pronounced the more I upgraded my system. I'm running a Krell now and find it's very sensitive to not just cables but to any sort of source. On my previous two systems (Marantz and NAD) the differences were noticeable but considerably less than the Krell.

Cables have inherent capacitance and conductance. These attributes and resistance are the components of a filter. With high input impedance you can imagine the multiplying effect this is going to contribute the filter parameters. My ears tell me there's a difference and scientifically there's a basis.

regards, David