The truth about interconnects - can you handle it?

It seems that people will deny that wires make a difference for several reasons:
1) They tried them and heard no difference.
2) They will not try it because their "theory" says it won't make a difference.
3) They're open minded, and would like to try, but are scared that they will be ripped off.

To all those in number 3) camp have a look at this thread. You can make interconnects for under $20 that sound fabulous.
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?fcabl&1046928936&openflup&1&4#1

Bomarc ... I'm pretty much in agreement that so far I haven't heard of any audio phenomena that could not be explained scientifically, including the science of the perception of sound. I must have miunderstood your previous post because I think we're in close agreement.

There have been many times when I've managed to improve the sound of my system by making a change that I was convinced would have no effect, and then afterwards I have been able to think through why it has worked. For example adding an external DAC to my mid-fi CD player made almost no difference, even though the DACs, power supplies and output stages were much better in the external DAC. Then I added a monarchy DIP and suddenly the external DAC sounds much much better. I then did some reading on timing jitter and it's pretty clear what happened. Same with interconnects, speaker cables etc etc.

As an electronic design engineer, and a fervent believer in the scientific approach to understanding our world it saddens me that so many "scientific" people are so closed minded to anything that they cannot explain with their limited science. Be skeptical, by all means, but don't be closed minded, because once you reach that point all progress halts. Remember Einstein .. imagination is more important than knowledge. Or the saying "To those with limited knowledge there are infinite possibilities ... to those with great knowledge there are few".
I'm skeptical that time travel or teleporting will ever be a reality, but I will never say never ... can you imagine explaining to a person of 500 years ago that people would travel to the moon, or that the rate of progression of time was altered by gravitational fields, or that the mass of an object increases with the speed of that object ?
I was very skeptical of cables, and I remain very skeptical of the amounts of money paid for cables, but I have heard with my own ears that they do make a difference.

Nrchy, do you really think that we cannot explain why cables sound different ? Personally I think we can, which is why the cables that people consistently rank the best show similar physical characteristics, whether it be minimum capacitance, minimum inductance, or stable, known impendance ... depending which is the key design parameter for the use of that cable.

I agree with you that "scientists" who claim that all wire sounds the same based on their limited science are misled. On the other hand scientists who claim that cables do sound different, and that in virtually all cases there's a simple explanation why they sound different, are being totally honest, and are probably correct.