Speaker wire is it science or psychology

sean - Thank you for your post. I have a story to tell you. I once had a well know audio engineering friend that was designing an RIAA stage for his new preamp. The man is a very smart designer and dedicated audiophile. He is also skeptical of all that cannot be measured.

The quality of an RIAA stage requires that the response cruve be very exact. One's ear is highly sensitive to frequency response because of the large amount of energy involved. So my friend cloistered himself in his lab with test gear and favorite records for a few days.

He added resistors, added capacitor, removed resistors, removed capacitor and so on for many hours. With each change, which is instantaneously available for evaluation, he decided good, better, worse and so on. Finally, he arrived at the perfect sound. He took what was now a geodetic structure and gave it to a tech to boil down to the essential circuit.

Much to the tech's surprise somewhere early in the testing, the growing pile of parts had become disconnect from the primary circuit. The hours of evaluation were entirely imaginary. All those many many times that he was sure that this or that change had made the sound better or worse were all fantasy.

There is nothing wrong with this designer. It is just that he is human. It is human nature that if we think we may hear a change we will.

Stevemj, I am interested to know, what is your system?

You know, I once paid a little visit to a well known and highly regarded speaker manufacturer (shall be nameless) who swore that all cables with similar inductance and cappacitance had to sound the same...and did! And, that if there was no messurable differences, then indeed there was no differnces (audibly or othewise) period. "God himself couldn't hear the differnces in cables!" he claimed!! So, ofcorse, he used all generic wires and various "stuff" to wire his display and demo systems up around the factory.
Needless to say, I think you can all immagine how good his systems sounded!...
...Should I tell ya?....Come on...You know...I don't have to even say it!....Right!!!!...They sounded like Crap!!!
12 Gauge generic wire all around and zip cord for interconnects! God the sound was really awfull...Brings back nightmares when I think about the display's they had set up there for demo's and what not. I mean down right imbarrasing! I couldn't believe they could even allow people over to hear there speakers set up like they did.
And this company produces some very highly noted class A speakers.
I mean, it was a shame because the speakers were pretty good and all. But there "systems" really sounded poor...and with just cause in my oppinion.
Need I go on to say that that same manufacturer also believes that amps and digital gear(with same sample rates and bit rates, etc) all sound the same as well!
SHOW ME A SYSTEM PUT TOGETHER BY SOMEONE WHO BELIEVES THAT WIRE IS WIRE, AND I'LL SHOW YOU A SYSTEM THAT SOUNDS LIKE CRAP!!!!....EVERY TIME.

Interesting post....but not intended to discover whether there are any differences in speaker cable, merely to discover how defensive the commentary would be. Perhaps the poster is a marketer of cables....your comments provide some of the buzz words that are useful for ad copy. The supposed features and benefits advertised will attract you, and you will tend to defend your purchase, using the reasoning in this thread, regardless of the qualities of the cable.

This thread reminds me of the debates (turned ugly) from years ago on the defunct Daja News Opinion