DO CABLES REALLY MATTER?

I have cables coming from The Cable Company at many different price points so I can compare speaker cables, XLR cables and USB cables. Timber vs AQ for speaker cables. Canare, Mogami Studio Gold, AQ Mackenzie and two others the Cable Company recommended. And four different USB cables including a printer cable. This is either going to be expensive or save me money.

PC -> PS Audio Stellar Gain Cell DAC -> Levinson 333 -> B&W Nautilus 801.

Every step of cables can be switched out. I also have an assistant signed up to come switch cables for me. As she knows absolutely about cables or Audio it will be double blind in my case. Then I intend to have her see if she can hear a difference. She is generally content listening to music on her MacBook or iPhone so if she can hear or describe a difference or identify different cables then we will have data.

I intend to do some video recording of the process and summarize what we find. I’ll share complete result here regardless of what we find.

I was kidding about it being double-blind.  I just want to know if I can identify different cables if I'm not the one switching them.  I don't need scientific proof, I'm just curious if I can actually do it.  

In a modern recording, I’m wondering how much of the signal passed from the mic to the engineer over whatever cables at the studio is left by the time it passes through the computer they’re processing/mixing on. I assume almost all of the sound staging for most of our recordings is entirely fake. I’d bet every instrument is processed and equalized and run through DSP filters. I’d say it’s much more likely that we’re buying cables to better hear the recording, and that recording is loosely connected to the signal at the mic.

I’m off to UPS now to pick up my Cable Company library order. I’m really interested in knowing what my first impressions are, hypnosis or not. I do agree with the statement above that if I have to really strain to hear a difference, then it’s not worth my money to upgrade.

My first impression isn't what I expected at all.  The Kimber Hero XLR cables sound really bright to me compared to my AQ Mackenzie XLRs.  The Kimber ~$1200 speaker cables are going to require more listening.  First impression is that my AQ Rocket 33 Bi-wires are pretty good and I will likely stick with them. 

Which brings me to .. I am going to buy a USB cable because even though I've only listened to one of them so far, I'm 99% sure I will be able to differentiate between my printer cable and the better USB cable blind. My current belief is that the difference wasn't subtle which is not what I expected.

So, cables matter.  Just not precisely how I expected.  So far.  A lot more listening and an assistant next week to help me blind compare and to see if she can hear differences.

So I did my experiment today. It wasn't scientific, it wasn't intended to be rigorous, and it wasn't controlled. However, the results were not at all what I was expecting. 

I borrowed several cables from The Cable Company. For the sake of this experiment I ignored the XLR cables because it was too many options for one day. I borrowed an Audioquest Coffee USB cable, a DH Labs silversonic USB cable and Furutech GT-2 USB cable. I also have a free printer cable that I had been using.

The other cables of interest were the Kimber Cable 12TC bi-wire cables which we compared to my Audioquest Rocket 33 bi-wire cables.

I have a PC -> USB -> PS Audio Stellar Gain Cell DAC -> Mark Levinson 333 dual mono amp -> B&W Nautilus 801 speakers.

My XLR cables are Audioquest Mackenzie and run from the DAC to the amp.

I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, I went to engineering school. Then I was an engineer in motherboard design/customer platform enabling for seven years. I understand PCB design and a fair amount of electronics, but I am not really a signals guy. My engineering knowledge would have told all of us that a USB cable was transmitting a digital signal and the free printer cable would sound as the ~$350 Audioquest cable.

For this "experiment" I enlisted the help of a friend. She is not an audiophile. She has only ever listened to my stereo once. She generally watches television and listens to music on her Macbook with no speakers or headphones. Sometimes she listens to music with the speaker in her iPhone. She does not have a stereo. I'm not even sure if she owns a pair of headphones.

The only thing I did to prepare her for this test was I switched the polarity of one speaker to show her what a major difference would be. She accurately described what happened when the speakers were out of phase in non-audiophile terms. She said that it sounded like everything that had depth seemed like it collapsed and that she couldn't tell where things were coming from. So she passed round one and got an idea of what a major difference in sound would be like. That's about as far as I expected her to be able to differentiate between differences.

We used Erykah Badu "Next Lifetime" and Nils Lofgren "Keith Don't Go" for the test. We played the first 1:05 of Next Lifetime and only the first 37 seconds of Keith Don't Go. Both streaming from TIDAL.

I started off switching between USB cables and asking for her to give feedback on them. It was amazing that she consistently identified every single change as better or worse and it corresponded to the price of the cable. The only exception is the DH Labs cable which is too bright and airy in my system and she didn't like it. I don't, either.

To be sure, I played just Next Lifetime four times in a row with the following cable pattern A, A, B, A where A was the Audioquest and B was the printer cable. She successfully identified that the first one and the last one both sounded really good, she wasn't as sure about the second one, but that the third one was definitely not as good. I don't remember exactly what words she used to describe it, but essentially that the bass wasn't as good and the singer didn't sound as real.

Then we took a break for a while and came back to see if she could hear a difference between speaker wires. Now the beauty is that she has absolutely no idea what Audioquest Rocket 33 or Kimber 12TC wires are and especially has no idea what connectors look like or what the difference between spades and banana plugs are. So it was blind to her because she has no idea what she was listening to. I literally said nothing during the test. I just told her that she would listen to both samples with one set of speaker cables and then listen to both with the other set.

The switch was from the AQ Rocket 33 cables that she had been listening to with the USB cable testing to the Kimber 12TC. I expected her to look at me and tell me she couldn't hear any difference. She said that the biggest difference was in the clarity of the bass, but that the guitar sounded sweeter and more realistic with the Kimber cables and that they were definitely the better cable. No hesitation, no doubt. She was sure.

I think the fact that she could not only hear a difference but describe it and make a quality judgement says a lot about the fact that "cables do matter."

This wasn't intended to be scientific proof. But a girl who listens to music on her phone nailed it for both USB cables and speaker cables. There aren't a lot of you on Audiogon, but if you're in the "coat hanger sounds as good as $1000 audiophile cable" camp.. doesn't that at least make you wonder if you're right?