Has Anyone Found Shunyata Cables Sounding Thin?

Sabai, it might help the discussion if you listed your system and provided some pics.

I agree that trust your ears can be misleading. We don't actually listen to music. Our ears (and to a far lesser extent, our bodies) pick up changes in air pressure which our brain then interprets as sound. The brain then processes certain sounds as music. Further processing in the brain categorizes the music into familiar archtypes and patterns. The key is that past experiences allows the brain to create internal models of "music" and the process of listening to music is comparing incoming sounds to these existing mental images of music. Effectively your brain is creating the music based upon external stimuli. As with nearly any human ability there's a variability within a population group and some people are better able to form mental models of music. Some people can instantly say whether it's Ben Webster or Coleman Hawkins, and others cannot. Some people can "hear" it's English horn and not an oboe.

What does this have to do with being an audiophile? Your system is a reflection of your mental model of what music should sound like. If you have a "good" mental model and further have the ability to assemble and setup an electronic system in your home that is close to your mental model, then other people of similar ability will say your system sounds good.

Trust your ears. Well, some people can trust their ears, but others should be working harder at developing better mental models of what they are hearing. On an internet forum such as this, it's near impossible to tell in which group a poster resides. This is particularly so when they don't list their system components.

Deaf people can enjoy music. Deaf musicians can even create new music. The human brain is where music is created and comprehended, not the ear. Read a musical score and tell me it's not true.

I'm not downplaying the benefits of having working ears. I am simply highlighting the primacy of the brain in experiencing music. A person can experience music whether the stimulus is aural, visual or conductive vibrations. The stimulus doesn't even have to be external; it could just be a mental image of some music. Some people can dance to the music in their head and some cannot.

Some suggested reading:

http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/topics/music02.htm

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080120003517AAsLIcg

http://gapersblock.com/transmission/2010/07/22/beyond_vibrations_the_deaf_musical_experience/

Zd542, you don't know whether it's true or not because you don't have the knowledge base to perform the act of reading a musical score. Others may simply know more than you on this subject. Though I do like your point about the steak.

Sabai, thank you for giving some info about your audio equipment. I find it interesting that you use an Atma-sphere amp in that its designer has frequently stated that properly designed balanced I/O should eliminate the differences in how cables sound in a system. Obviously, that's not the case for you.