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

Hi Ted, I'm not saying all cables sound the same. Cables could bring out the full potential of the system (provided there is already a musical sounding system and excellent system synergy), but it is unlikely they will add much more "musicality" to it. In case of a sytem with bad system synergy you cannot expect from cables (no matter what they cost) that they will "transform" the entire sound into something "magically". It is a fact that most cable advertisements are giving the impression that cables are capable of elevating the sound of a system, whatever the system and whatever the synergy, to a higher level of excellence, but this is absolutely not true.

Chris

Dazzdax. I certainly would not go so far as to say cables cannot elevate the sound to a higher level of excellence. Does this not imply a zero improvement?

Audiofeil states:

"Cables are system and listener dependent. It's that simple."

That sums it up as well for me. Cables, regardless of their cost, are very system dependent and subjective percentage improvement can only be subjectively quantified by the user in his own system.

Tbg wrote > "I certainly would not go so far as to say cables cannot elevate the sound to a higher level of excellence. Does this not imply a zero improvement?"

Perhaps just an issue of semantics, but a cable is not an active component. It cannot "add" anything to a signal; there is no amplification or gain and it shouldn't be shaping the frequency response or other signal characteristics.

What a cable can do is take things away; it can fail to accurately transmit the signal. It can allow EMI or RF interference to distort the signal. It can change the frequency response. It can fail to transmit the full signal strength. But it cannot make the signal "better" than when it left the source component (unless you count on the cable's deficiency to be an inverse match to a defect elsewhere in a system.)

Of course, that is an interesting approach, build a system based on combining defects and substandard performance. Not the approach one would typically think to take, but there is room for everyone in this hobby. ;-)

Mlsstl, it is semantics. Since some cables sound better they must of necessity be passing the signal better and/or keeping spurious signals out better. They are subtracting less in the first case or adding less in the second case. I don't know what this perspective adds to the discussion, however.