On many ocasions I have been at people's houses and asked to comment on their systems etc. Generally during any kind of review I try to glance at the cabling. You would be amazed how often I find blackened copper ends held at best loosely into their sockets. As a matter of course I will snip off those blackened ends, expose some clean copper from under the sheath and properly tighten the connections.

Sometimes this simple fix can provide discernable improvement in the sound - sometimes not (to the owner I mean).

On other ocasions I have found cables worn, bent at right angles and even nailed to the wall (through the copper). I generally suggest replacement under these circumstances - unless there is sufficient wire to cut off the damaged sections.

To say someone is lying when they find huge differences in cables is wrong - there can be many and various causes aside from any sonic benefits of one cable over another.

MY favorite of all was a friend who bought a pair of Klipsch KLF 30's and was complaining of having no bass (each speaker has 2 12 inch woofers in a ported enclosure). when I went round I discovered the problem was the cable. He had only connected the upper connectors - the lower ones were not connected to anything (the little solid copper links usually supplied were MIA). I cut about 3 inches off each cable run and linked the 2 connectors together. Made quite a difference...