Cables more hype than value?

Are "properly designed" and "given application" escape clauses?

If so, then you've just described a cable made to order for a "specific" application.

Friend who are not into this hobby as much as I can hear the difference as well but don't consider it important enough to worry about it. That alone speaks volumes as I suspect that that is the underlying meme going on here.

All the best,
Nonoise

Are "properly designed" and "given application" escape clauses?

No, not at all. I'm just stating this caveat because you *can* improperly design a cable and make it sound different. You can make speakers cables that have too small a gauge for a given speaker's impedance, or the required cable length. You can make interconnects that have improper impedance, bad shields, poor insulators, or some weird geometry that increases inductance or capacitance beyond some reasonable trade-off of values.

For example, a speaker with a minimum impedance of less than 2 ohms that needs a twenty-five foot cable run is not going to be best served by 16 gauge cables - a 16 gauge cable in that scenario may indeed cause audible differences, and there won't be any mystery why. It'll be measurable.

I think Aczel says that there are no differences in wires that cannot be explained in terms of resistance, capacitance and inductance. His back issues contain an article showing how cables with different electrical characteristics caused very large and measurable differences in the frequency response based on the cable's interaction with the amp/speaker circuit. I know he once wrote that coat hangers are identical to the most expensive cables, but that statement seems inconsistent with his own article.

On amplifiers, he does say that amplifiers of a similar design, matched in levels and run below clipping are indistinguishable from each other in listening tests. He never said that all amps - tube and solid state, set and push-pull, all sound the same.

Okay.

One set of cables are designed to "fit" the requirements of an amp and a pair of speakers.
Said cable will not work as well with other amps and speakers since they are of different design and needs.
No one cable is good enough for all applications?
Did we just come full circle?

I have several sets of cables that sound different to anyone who would care to listen and all are well regarded, well made cables. So it seems that a cable that would fit the requirements of a given system can only be made one way and if anyone makes that particular cable, they should all sound the same.

That I understand but doesn't it stand to reason that there need be as many types of cable needed to satisfy the particular requirements of all the possible combinations of amps, speakers, length and gauge in order to get the best possible sound?

I don't mean to sound obtuse (though I've been accused of being stubborn) but I think we're all agreeing on this from different perspectives.

All the best,
Nonoise

One set of cables are designed to "fit" the requirements of an amp and a pair of speakers.
Said cable will not work as well with other amps and speakers since they are of different design and needs.
No one cable is good enough for all applications?
Did we just come full circle?

No, no, no! That isn't what I said. Either you're foolish or just being difficult, I'm going to assume the latter. In the case of the example I made for speakers, any 10 gauge stranded copper cable will work for any speaker, in any reasonable length (like, less than 100 feet). 12 gauge wire works just fine for many, many cases. I was just pointing out that you can screw up speaker cable by going to too small a gauge. I was not at all trying to say that every speaker needed a different set of cable parameters.

Any properly designed RCA-terminated interconnect will work indistinguishably from another, no matter what the length. For lengths over, I dunno, fifteen feet, you might want to consider balanced cables (XLR-terminated) to take advantage of common mode rejection, but there won't be audible differences between cables. In the case of XLR cables, anything you pick up in a music store for mics or amps will do fine.

We did not come full circle. Stop it!