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


We spend quite a bit in cables for our systems, I'm wondering how much overall sonic improvement we get from cables? Let me explain my thought.....

I'm very happy with my current cabling (IC's, PC's, digital coax, and speaker cables). I was thinking about removing ALL of them and putting in ALL the original stuff I started with (stock PC's, cheap Monster IC's, Monster digital coax, and Monster XP copper speaker wire).

Then listening to the system to see how much degradation in sound I would have. Has anybody else thought of doing this or has done this?
vman71
Bin, I would go one step further and contend not only that the vast majority would hear no difference in a double-blind test, but that the vast majority of those who claim they CAN hear a difference would likewise fail said double-blind test. This has been pretty well demonstrated and documented.
I have a system consisting of speakers with extreme revealing properties, and a power section that matches it. I can distinctly hear the difference between cables.

They go, from transparent as my other gear to real garbage mouths. The hierarchy is not cost dependent. The worst I've had was a $9,000 speaker cable. The second worst was a $7,000 speaker cable. The best I have heard, meaning I don't hear them, have been $25 per foot DIY ribbon speaker Cables. and $1.00 per foot interconnects.

Power cables are a different matter.
Well, i think it s pretty well documented that DBT's are unreliable themselves. I am the last person to argue in preference of high cost tweaks, but I think neither the DBT or the non-DBT community likes to admit that everyone is a little bit right.
Muralman1
Makes sense as those 9k cables are basically funding an R/D effort to tailor the sound with R,L,C, and dielectrics tuned for a particular voicing. These cables are far from "neutral", despite their best efforts to sound that way.
Mothra, I'm sincerely curious as to what you mean by "well documented that DBT's are unreliable themselves". Unreliable at doing what?... because the only thing a double-blind test (as applied to audio) claims to do is determine whether a person can distinguish a sonic difference by hearing alone. Participants in the test are given ample opportunity to identify the difference between conditions 'A' and 'B', and that's all the test aims to determine.

Now I realize that some people will confuse the question of auditory perception with that of explanatory physics, which is an entirely different issue. When listening tests fail to identify phenomena that can be measured with other instrumentation or mathematical models, this is no different than a motorcycle "failing" to get you to the moon.

Can you give an example of how a double-blind listening test would be unreliable at its intended purpose (determining how consistently one can identify an audible difference)?