Oy. I certainly don’t believe science has completed its mission of creating a perfect model and understanding of the physical universe. It never will. But that doesn’t mean I believe in ghosts.
Electronically reproduced music is, in the end, a moving magnet that pushes air. If a tweak back up the reproduction chain doesn’t affect the movement of the magnet, it doesn’t affect the movement of the air, and it is thus not affecting the sound of the music. Anyone who believes otherwise is basically thinking the equivalent of believing a volcanic eruption is the sign of an angry deity.
Because science is imperfect and we won’t have more sensitive measuring instruments until we do, I will make some allowances that maybe some "snake oil" audio tweaks may actually affect sound quality in ways that are too nuanced or minute to be measured now but will be able to be measured in our sci-fi future. And then I will make an allowance that maybe the brain is sensitive enough to pick up what instruments can’t. Although that still doesn’t justify the dramatic results some folks report. But still, the desirability of the level of impact relative to the goal of achieving perfection is a subjective one, so I won’t say that a .000001% improvement isn’t a worthy goal if someone thinks it is.
But many of these tweaks simply go against common sense. It is theoretically possible that a power cable would be of lesser quality, or contain a defect that renders it less capable of conducting current than, the power cables in your wall. But to me that clearly can be fixed by remedying that defect and rendering the power cable to be of consistent quality with what is in the wall. But that’s not a $500 fix with fancy colors and giant connectors. It’s a $5 fix, with maybe a little workmanship involved. Otherwise it is just bling. The only way a power cable that goes beyond fixing a defect could affect audio quality would be if it goes much farther than one meter - it would need to go all the way to the pole, or the power substation, etc.
Let’s pose a hypothetical: let’s go to the sci-fi world where we are sure that measuring instruments are confidently as sensitive and capable as human hearing at measuring an audio signal emitting from the moving magnets (we may be there already, but I want this premise clear as part of the hypothetical). In that scenario, if the measuring instrument detected no difference when a fancy fuse is reversed in direction, would the pro-tweaker crowd still hold to the everything-is-subjective-and-if-I-hear-a-difference-then-there-is-one axiom?
I won’t hide the ball on my own belief. I do accept that there is a level of poor accessories that are effectively defective. 20 gauge speaker cable on a long run. Very cheap interconnects that diminish conductivity under torque. Unshielded or improperly grounded cables when shielding or grounding are required to eliminate interference of some sort. So then there is a level of problem solving to eliminate these "defects" and that includes after-market products. But those are $5-$100 items, not all of this super expensive, visually stunning but scientifically non-distinct products.
It’s bling. Enjoy it if you want to - I’d love to have some of that stuff just because it looks cool. But once you’ve gone to the level of eliminating defects, you’ve gone as far as you can with this stuff from the standpoint of affecting the movement of those magnets. There is a magical, mystical quality to music. But that doesn’t move the reproduction of music beyond the reach of science and engineering.
