Are cable recommendations worth anything?

I wouldn’t waste my time on this anymore guys.  @ahofer is clearly dug in like an Alabama tick and no amount of evidence or experience will convince him otherwise.  His ears obviously aren’t good enough to hear differences in cables, so good for him.  He gets to live happily in ignorance.  He probably thinks there’s no difference between DACs either.  Oops, there I went and opened a whole other can o’ worms.  Heh heh.  Anyway, why bother to continue banging your bleeding heart against some mad bugger’s wall is all I’m sayin’ here.  Peace out. 

Those are the only things scientific evidence suggests at this point, despite the occasional furious snowstorm of denial.

Well, I listen with my ears not scientific instruments.  Not too hard to hear differences between cables IME.  Whether the differences are improvements or not is another matter entirely. 

How does that make sense and how can this possibly help the poor slob that asked the question?

It can’t because the poor slob didn’t ask the right question.  Garbage in, garbage out.  He got exactly what he deserved IMO. 

@tony1954 — Wow, you really wanna push a bad hand eh? Ok.

According to your profile you have asked 32 questions, but have provided 3,208 responses. According to those metrics, it seems that there are very few instances of you not sharing your opinion.

So I’ve been on here for like 20 years trying to help people. Guilty. What’s your point? You’ve asked 4 questions and given 78 responses, which makes you an expert on, what? You’re still in diapers here dude, and you’re making yourself look like a bit of a fool gotta tellya.

"Garbage in, garbage out. He got exactly what he deserved IMO." Yes, very sincere.

Again, because this still doesn’t seem to be penetrating the cranial armor, I wasn’t speaking to the guy who wrote it but more to you in the hope you might learn something about how to ask a question here and actually get helpful responses since you don’t seem to understand why the “poor slob” as you call him (not very respectful BTW) got unhelpful recommendations that were all over the place. And yes, my GIGO comment was very sincere and very true. Big-boy pants. Use’em.

@tony1954 as to what would be the “right question,” here’s the original question...

"Can you recommend RCA cable brands that match well with Denafrips from dac to amplifier?"

Any cable under the sun can be an appropriate answer to this question because people’s individual tastes are all over the place not to mention that the answer also relies heavily (among other things) on the particular amp being used. What the hell does “match well” even mean? What matches well for one person may sound like utter crap to someone else. Case in point about the recommendations he ended up getting...

The sheer variety of "highly recommended" cables, lends me to believe that the cables are much less important to the sound than the component itself. Recommendations ran the gamut from the Tellurium Q Black Diamond cables at $1,100 CDN per metre, to the Blue Jeans cables at about $50 CDN per metre

The better and more effective way to ask the question would be to specify what interconnect (and amp) they’re currently using and what specifically they’re looking to improve upon and what aspects of sound reproduction (i.e. tonal warmth, upper octave detail, 3D soundstage, PRaT, micro/macrodynamics, etc.) are most important to them — along the lines of what @millercarbon said earlier. Then the recommendations would be more focused on what the OP was looking to actually achieve rather than being useless and all over the map. The more effort and info you put into asking a question the more targeted and effective the recommendations here will be, and the opposite is also true. Period. This poster’s question was very vague, and accordingly the responses were predictably all over the place. Like I said, garbage in, garbage out.

And BTW, just because the differences in “wires” may be lower on an absolute basis than, say, speakers, that doesn’t necessarily make them less important. That’s like saying a car’s engine is more important than the tires — silly. In the end everything in an audio system impacts its sound and performance and needs to work together within the context of a particular system and listener tastes. Discount the importance of interconnects, cables, or power cords at your own peril.

@tony1954 — Due to your complete and ongoing inability to understand my post here you’re making unfounded and inaccurate accusations about me, my motives, and the posts I make here.  You’re just completely and utterly wrong and seem unable to process information properly.  Go read through my responses here that are always respectful and as helpful as I can make them, then go eat your uninformed and ignorant words.  Sorry you got your panties all in a bunch over nothing.

Aw Tony, let’s put on our big-boy pants here and get our facts straight, shall we? I wasn’t speaking to the OP of that post, rather I was trying to convey to YOU on THIS THREAD how he might have asked his question so he got a better answer.  But the fact that you don’t know why it wasn’t a good question explains a lot.  I’d never approach someone like that by being mean or dismissive, and I always try to provide sincere help to everyone I respond to here. I remember that post and probably didn’t respond, but if I did it’d be along the lines of this, which is a response I made to a similarly vague post so I could try to provide more useful recommendations to the guy...

Let’s back up a bit. What would you most like to improve upon over what you have now, and what aspects of sound reproduction are most important to you? You’ll get much more useful and targeted recommendations if you can specify these crucial things.

I have asked similar questions in response to countless threads here in an effort to provide them with more helpful recommendations. Does that sound inflexible, arrogant, or abusive to you? In the context of YOUR post I was expressing my frustration over the sheer amount of vague questions that get asked here.

Am I the only person that is confused when someone asks an open-ended question like this about cables?

So yeah, most likely you are. I think most people are not surprised that when you ask an open-ended question you’re gonna get a wide range of answers, but somehow in your surprise you’ve construed it to mean that interconnects are less important. Huh. But to answer your initial question more directly — yes, cable recommendations can be extremely helpful if the question is asked in a way that allows someone to provide a useful response. Hope this helped clear up your confusion.

@tony1954 — Thank you Tony.  All good.  Water under the bridge.