While there could be a difference, there is some bad physics used to sell some cables. For instance, skin effect and the claim to need to mitigate it with litz or ribbon construction. Skin effect is alleged to increase the resistance of speaker cables by diminishing the cross sectional ares of the cable conducting the signal. All this is true, but how much does the signal get attenuated by the increased resistance at 20 kHz? This can be calculated and approximated within a few percent by multiplying the skin depth by the outer circumference of the cross section. For typical 8 gauge cables ten feet the effective resistance changes from about 0.0064 Ohms to 0.011 Ohms. Put this in series with 4 Ohms such as a Magnepan speaker and the ratio of resistance is an increase on the order of about 0.01 db. Skin effect is not an issue and cable designers either know this or they ought to know the engineering/physics to calculate it. This issue destroys the credibility of so many of their other claims such as confusing grain boundaries with Johnson-Niquest thermal noise of any conductor and the insulation introducing electric field distortion from dipole molecules in the insulation.
I do not question the possibility of a badly constructed distorting the signal but I do not believe thousands of dollars or even hundreds of dollars for a cable can pass a strictly conducted double-blind test over a well constructed cable. Could anybody whose ego is connected with spending $12,000 admit they hear no difference they don't imagine? I am not so sure.
I do not question the possibility of a badly constructed distorting the signal but I do not believe thousands of dollars or even hundreds of dollars for a cable can pass a strictly conducted double-blind test over a well constructed cable. Could anybody whose ego is connected with spending $12,000 admit they hear no difference they don't imagine? I am not so sure.