For a long time I considered that all wire was the same. My Dad who has been an electrical engineer for a long time would say that for speaker cable, as long as the gauge was large enough for the length, that was all that mattered. For interconnects, if you had a problem with noise, then a cable with shielding may help, but other than that, no differences.
Several times I've been curious about these types of debates and tried some experimenting to see if I could tell a difference. I compared the free $0.25 interconnects that come with stuff to Kimber PBJ and some AudioQuest stuff, but I didn't want to spend a lot for this experiment. I couldn't really tell a difference with the equpiment I had. I was using a Sony ES preamp with lots of digital gizmos built in, a decent amp, and Definitive Technology speakers. I was pretty convinced that there was no difference.
In the last year, I got a separate preamp for music and B&W Natuilas 802's. The dealer was asking what kind of cables I was using and I told him about the $8 balanced cables that I brought at the electronics supply store. He claimed that was choking my system. So he set up a demo at the store and I brought my cables. We tried my cables, some $240 cables, some $900, and some $2000, and there were clear changes at each step of the way. The most obvious of course was the difference between the $8 and $240. A cable with no specific engineering towards sound quality vs a cable that is trying to preserve the sound and minimizing distortion makes a big difference. The bass was not muddy anymore, instruments that kinda blended together could now be heard as distinctly separate instruments. Its really difficult to tell the difference unless you listen to a system that can reveal the differences and you do the A-B-A-B tests.
I would suggest going to a dealer and getting the chance to compare cables in several price ranges.]
Its really hard to get through to the truth about cables because there is a lot of snake oil sales out there and tons of buzz words floating about. While I was looking around for information, I found that there were some measurable differences in resistances, capacitance, inductance etc. Some of the measurements were suspect because they do them way beyond the audible range - so I don't know if those really have any effect. On one site, they showed oscilloscope traces at the amp end and speaker end of a cable, and you could see how different cables add distortion.
Its also difficult to swallow because the companies making the cables have some huge profit margins built in especially on their top of the line cables. If you look at the difference in construction between one line and the next, they make slight changes, trading one dielectric for another, or a slightly different copper purity, or adding air tube insulation instead of foamed insulation - and those kind of changes may not cost them any more to manufacture, or perhaps a few cents per foot but yet they charge hundreds per foot difference but that all comes down to the free market, supply and demand. They have to make certain models stand out as high end, and stand up to their competition etc. Its hard to get above the noise level with so many companies and different cable designs.
I think the easiest way to determine if better cables are worthwhile is to have a demo yourself - and go in with your current views and make someone prove to you that they make a difference. I would have never beleived it. My old system was so muddy by itself that cables didn't make any difference, but once I cleaned it up the difference was obvious - its not subtle so it wasn't hard to convince me even though I expected that I'd have to strain to hear anything and then convince myself somehow that I could tell a difference. It wasn't like that at all.
Several times I've been curious about these types of debates and tried some experimenting to see if I could tell a difference. I compared the free $0.25 interconnects that come with stuff to Kimber PBJ and some AudioQuest stuff, but I didn't want to spend a lot for this experiment. I couldn't really tell a difference with the equpiment I had. I was using a Sony ES preamp with lots of digital gizmos built in, a decent amp, and Definitive Technology speakers. I was pretty convinced that there was no difference.
In the last year, I got a separate preamp for music and B&W Natuilas 802's. The dealer was asking what kind of cables I was using and I told him about the $8 balanced cables that I brought at the electronics supply store. He claimed that was choking my system. So he set up a demo at the store and I brought my cables. We tried my cables, some $240 cables, some $900, and some $2000, and there were clear changes at each step of the way. The most obvious of course was the difference between the $8 and $240. A cable with no specific engineering towards sound quality vs a cable that is trying to preserve the sound and minimizing distortion makes a big difference. The bass was not muddy anymore, instruments that kinda blended together could now be heard as distinctly separate instruments. Its really difficult to tell the difference unless you listen to a system that can reveal the differences and you do the A-B-A-B tests.
I would suggest going to a dealer and getting the chance to compare cables in several price ranges.]
Its really hard to get through to the truth about cables because there is a lot of snake oil sales out there and tons of buzz words floating about. While I was looking around for information, I found that there were some measurable differences in resistances, capacitance, inductance etc. Some of the measurements were suspect because they do them way beyond the audible range - so I don't know if those really have any effect. On one site, they showed oscilloscope traces at the amp end and speaker end of a cable, and you could see how different cables add distortion.
Its also difficult to swallow because the companies making the cables have some huge profit margins built in especially on their top of the line cables. If you look at the difference in construction between one line and the next, they make slight changes, trading one dielectric for another, or a slightly different copper purity, or adding air tube insulation instead of foamed insulation - and those kind of changes may not cost them any more to manufacture, or perhaps a few cents per foot but yet they charge hundreds per foot difference but that all comes down to the free market, supply and demand. They have to make certain models stand out as high end, and stand up to their competition etc. Its hard to get above the noise level with so many companies and different cable designs.
I think the easiest way to determine if better cables are worthwhile is to have a demo yourself - and go in with your current views and make someone prove to you that they make a difference. I would have never beleived it. My old system was so muddy by itself that cables didn't make any difference, but once I cleaned it up the difference was obvious - its not subtle so it wasn't hard to convince me even though I expected that I'd have to strain to hear anything and then convince myself somehow that I could tell a difference. It wasn't like that at all.