"Bob Latham" wrote in message


I'm happy to agree that in many cases a cable will sound
different simply because it is not a very good cable
electrically speaking but that its poor performance may
suit the balance of the speakers or the personal taste of
the owner/listener.

Thing is, you really have to do something exceptional to have a cable that
actually makes things sound different.

There are no such things as "many cases (where) a cable will sound different
simply because it is not a very good cable."

There are some cases where a good cable becomes a bad cable because of
issues like corrosion on jacks, and broken conductors in the cables,
particularly at the connectors.

For example, there are about 40 generic mic cables in a sound system that I
work with all of the time. Some might be up to 30 years old, but most are
less than 10 years old. Some are very cheap and some are well-known brand
names and advertised for rough service.

Over the 7 years I've been working with this system, a cable goes bad every
few months. In every case but one, the problem was a broken soldered
connection at a XLR connector. In the one exceptional case, the cable itself
ended up with many breaks within the cable due to being twirled incessantly
by a certain vocalist. All of the broken cables but that one were repaired
by completely redoing the attachment of the connector, and in some cases the
connector was replaced. Once repaired, the broken cables were put back into
the pool, where their reliability was about the same as all the rest.

This is very different from a typical home audio system.

I know that the maths predicts that differences in
frequency response of the speaker as a result of using
different cables is so small that they cannot be heard.

Depends on what you call "different". There are speakers like those that
Trevor Wilson likes to talk about, that are incompetently designed and have
such bizarre impedance curves that most common speaker cables can cause
audible differences. There is the matter of overpriced Monster cables that
are actually pretty thin-gauge wire, and may cause audible differences with
some speakers in a home environment. Ironically, less money spent on
competent commodity cables would solve the problem.

I agree, if you turn the volume up or down by 1dB you will
struggle to notice it.

In an ABX test, that is generally easy to detect.

However, turn the bass up or down
by somewhat less 1dB and leave the mid and tweeter where
they are and that is much more obvious, surprisingly so
because you have a reference and a balance to listen to.

In an ABX test, that is generally easy to detect. However you've made a
relevant point, and that is that the better job you can do of presenting the
alternatives so they are readily comparable, the easier it is to hear
differences. That's why those of us who have years of experience tend to
snicker about comparisons involving cable-swapping. You can't swap cables
manually and have a close comparison. Too much time elapses.

I think this is why speaker cables have a surprising
effect for many people.

No, the most common cause of audible differences in home comparisons of
audio gear are due to two things:

(1) A badly-done comparison that either adds trivial but highly audible
differences like level changes, and/or completely masks true audible
differences because its so awkward.

(2) The natural human tendency to hear differences where there are none.


I've never noticed a speaker cable have any effect on the
sound stage or the image presented by the speakers, it
only, for me at least, changes the tonal balance.

If I get to pick the cables and I get to pick the speakers, the answer is
either yes or no, depending on what I want you to hear.

Interconnects, for me do the opposite. I've never noticed
a tonal change but have noticed sound stage and imaging
differences. I've no idea why.

It's really tough for home audio interconnects in good shape to make audible
changes to sound quality.

But the same human imagination is engaged in any listening test. A lot of
setting up a listening test is ensuring that whatever results you get are
actually relevant to what you are changing.