The correct answer is that it all depends.
The effect of cabling choice is system-dependant.
At the risk of poking the bear, I have a theory that the naysayers who claim "wire is wire" or "assuming capacitance and resistance are within a certain range-wire is wire", have systems that don’t reveal changes in cabling. It makes perfect sense that the folks who don’t want to spend the money on more expensive cabling or listen with an open mind are the same folks who buy lower level amps and preamps and speakers thinking that all amps sound the same and that preamps are nothing but input selectors with volume controls and that inexpensive loudspeakers are plenty good enough.
At even further risk of poking the bear(s), damn there are a lot of dumbasses on this Board! It blows the mind! Exhibit A is the chicken crying that the sky is falling because one of Kalman Rubinson’s reviews did not include measurements from which said chicken falsely concluded and declared that Stereophile has now globally dispensed with measurements. This is stupefying stupidity. In that same thread, a very cynical but unfortunately likely correct person concluded that 97% of us humans just don’t want to use our brains any more than we absolutely have to.
Can anyone imagine how difficult it must be for a bricks and mortar salesperson to deal with the public when this is the status quo? How in the world can a salesperson (and let’s face it, 99.999% of them are male, so "salesman") possibly explain to a price-conscious customer that for the most part, you do get what you pay for in audio? So for this reason and many others, there are fewer and fewer bricks and mortar stores and now we have even less educated lemmings who buy over the web and express their views based upon what little they think they know.
So to the OP, I advise you, and you can take this as worthy of thought or not, that the answer is unequivocally "yes" that better cabling can improve the perceived soundstage width and depth, but it depends on so many other factors such as the equipment design and quality and whether the room is properly set up and whether the source is good among others. Without going into specifics, I recently completed a six month long experiment of various IC’s and SC’s and heard tremendous differences in the soundstage width and depth among other things with each change of cabling. But my sound system is not yours.
The effect of cabling choice is system-dependant.
At the risk of poking the bear, I have a theory that the naysayers who claim "wire is wire" or "assuming capacitance and resistance are within a certain range-wire is wire", have systems that don’t reveal changes in cabling. It makes perfect sense that the folks who don’t want to spend the money on more expensive cabling or listen with an open mind are the same folks who buy lower level amps and preamps and speakers thinking that all amps sound the same and that preamps are nothing but input selectors with volume controls and that inexpensive loudspeakers are plenty good enough.
At even further risk of poking the bear(s), damn there are a lot of dumbasses on this Board! It blows the mind! Exhibit A is the chicken crying that the sky is falling because one of Kalman Rubinson’s reviews did not include measurements from which said chicken falsely concluded and declared that Stereophile has now globally dispensed with measurements. This is stupefying stupidity. In that same thread, a very cynical but unfortunately likely correct person concluded that 97% of us humans just don’t want to use our brains any more than we absolutely have to.
Can anyone imagine how difficult it must be for a bricks and mortar salesperson to deal with the public when this is the status quo? How in the world can a salesperson (and let’s face it, 99.999% of them are male, so "salesman") possibly explain to a price-conscious customer that for the most part, you do get what you pay for in audio? So for this reason and many others, there are fewer and fewer bricks and mortar stores and now we have even less educated lemmings who buy over the web and express their views based upon what little they think they know.
So to the OP, I advise you, and you can take this as worthy of thought or not, that the answer is unequivocally "yes" that better cabling can improve the perceived soundstage width and depth, but it depends on so many other factors such as the equipment design and quality and whether the room is properly set up and whether the source is good among others. Without going into specifics, I recently completed a six month long experiment of various IC’s and SC’s and heard tremendous differences in the soundstage width and depth among other things with each change of cabling. But my sound system is not yours.