Speaker wire is it science or psychology


I have had the pleasure of working with several audio design engineers. Audio has been both a hobby and occupation for them. I know the engineer that taught Bob Carver how a transistor works. He keeps a file on silly HiFi fads. He like my other friends considers exotic speaker wire to be non-sense. What do you think? Does anyone have any nummeric or even theoretical information that defends the position that speaker wires sound different? I'm talking real science not just saying buzz words like dialectric, skin effect capacitance or inductance.
stevemj
Of Course it is a science. Speaker wires did not fall out of sky.!!!They are designed to carry a signa from amp tp speakers. The difference you, I mean most of us hear is as result of how good the science concepts have been implemented.
Pops and Detlof hit it on the nose. Like I said, 10% of cable is true science and the remainder 90% is psychology (snake oil) pushed by the press. The minute we can not tell the difference between cables, they ( meaning the press or their advocate/deciples) tells us that our system is not good enough to tell the difference. This is somewhat true, but doesn't that make you feel like an idiot because your not smart enough or can afford to have a system that can tell the difference? What's worse is when you tell them your system (which you have spent a lot if money on), but you still can't tell the difference, they say it's your ear that doesn't know how to listen. Are you suppose to feel handicap now because can't hear that they hear? Before you know it, you start to trick your mind to hear what they tell you what you should hear just so that you can hold a conversation with the press in their lingo. Talk about psychology. I don't mean to insult anyone with my comments. I am just trying to raise questions/discussions to see if we have all gone over board with this. Think of this as the checks and balances of our society/industry. The industry advances every year and they do take us in various directions. Consumers like you and I should have discussions like this to keep the industry going to a direct that we are comfortable with. After all we are their life blood considering how much money we have spent. In addition, don't you think Audiogon tracks and expose these comments to the vendors as feedbacks?
Whosyoudaddy, good comment. I tried out a rave reviewed pair of speakers a few years ago and rejected them because they were too bright. When the dealer told the distributor (a famously obnoxious guy in the industry) his response was that (1) I obviously needed better cables (so I wasnt't smart enough to use his speakers properly) and (2) the dealer shouldnt lend out his speakers to people with junky cables.
Thanks for stealing my thoughts whosyourdaddy. I should have said it is part science, part psychology, part voodoo& snake oil and part whoopla. But the fact remains- With use of science principals you can achieve a perfect cable( with right combination of components) but after certain price point(read percenatge perfection compared to 100% being absolute perfect), the benefits are probably there ( measurements wise) but you are at mercy of psychology science to tell the difference. Similar to system as whole, after certain price point, rate of return diminishes drastically.