Quote Originally Posted by Sir Terrence the Terrible View Post
Mr. Peabody, I don't like majoring in minors. I chose a well built cable that sounded neutral to my ears, degraded the signal the least among those I measured, and was reasonably priced. With all of the cables I heard, none had a bright sound or dark sound, just varying degrees of resolution and that is it. The point I am making is it took a NC-20 room, speaker/room interactions corrected to -+1 from 40-20khz, a extremely quiet amp and pre-amp to hear these very subtle difference. I highly doubt that anyone can hear these subtle differences on a less than $5000 dollar two channel system setup in their living room. Most here do not tackle room acoustics(too complicated), don't have the signal chain to reveal these differences, nor do they have a room quiet enough. If a piece of cable is taking your system to a new level, the old cables were probably not up to snuff. The differences between cables are not night and day, but profoundly subtle if they are well made.
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So you admit you hear differences on the subjective level, albeit you hear these differences under rigorously controlled conditions. Also you admit that these subjective sound differences are a factor, (along with measurement), in you choice of cable. Can you personally usually correctly identify your chosen vs. rejected cables in blind testing?

I think you do audiophiles here too little credit implying that they are deceiving themselves about sound differences. Carefully controlling listening conditions might ensure more accurate results but certainly various people here have equipment that has the resolution to make differences audible. Furthermore from personal, granted, subjective experience I can hear sound difference anywhere in the audio chain regardless of whether the changes being auditioned at strong or a weak point in the chain.

For my part, I have consistently advised that cable differences are very small and that most people, i.e. those with entry to mid-range equipment, ought to buy reliable, cheap cables, (e.g. Blue Jeans Cable), and spend the difference on improving other components. This is rational advice, but though cables can be overpriced, (they have the highest markups of all components), they are usually cheaper than the components and there is a temptation to look there for improvements.