Why Do Cables Matter?

^  "I’m a dealer for Infigo audio."

I appreciate the honesty.  

Funny how people go on rants and say cables don’t make a difference. It’s simple as this. Unless they have your ears how can they tell. Then the arrogance to tell you that you are just not smart enough like they are to understand what you are not hearing with your own ears! Lol 😂 can’t make this ish up! INFIGO AUDIO OFFERS FREE DEMOS SO YOU CAN TRUST YOUR OWN EARS! 

most of us are too old to clearly see our cables from the listening chair...a friend connected my cables, so I never actually touched them...

Wire for audio gear is more honestly assessed by the jewelry comparison: if it looks good and you like the way it feels, buy it!

With the better power cord, the sound will be closer to the original music. This video sound is as close as the production audio gets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHEpZR_VHHs

The original music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiDRLHXSyT0

Alex/Wavetouch

Is there some magical difference that occurs to the electricity after it comes out of the wall?   

Maybe that's the "special" electricity.  All the miles of electricity before the wall outlet doesn't matter.  We'll fix it at that last six feet before the amp.  

Power cables  are psychoacoustic nonsense.  Placebo effect and expectation bias.  The owners and sellers of these don't want to hear that.  Especially the sellers.

On the other hand, the placebo effect does work.

               WELL: the Cargo Cult's building another runway.

                                         Time for a rewind:

Cargo cult science is a pseudoscientific method of research that favors evidence that confirms an assumed hypothesis. In contrast with the scientific method, there is no vigorous effort to disprove or delimit the hypothesis.[1] The term cargo cult science was first used by physicist Richard Feynman during his 1974 commencement address at the California Institute of Technology.[1]

Cargo cults are religious practices that have appeared in many traditional tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures.

     Do a bit a research and you'll learn those primitives were limited in their understanding, of what they saw with their eyes, based on their prior experience, education and BIASES.

                                                A rewind:

                 It isn't that the Denyin'tologists are ignorant.

               It's they're knowing* so much, that's WRONG.

                       *heart of the Dunning-Kruger Effect

                                              OR, two:

     The Church of the Naysayer Doctrine (like every other faith-based, religious cult) has as many dopes as it does Popes.   

     Bring up anything resembling SCIENCE/PHYSICS, dated later than the 1800’s and they become apoplectic, not having the formal education to comprehend the concepts, or- possible ramifications.    THAT would be hilarious, were it not so pathetic!        

           Gimme That Old Time Religion, Gimme That Old Time Religion, etc.

        At the very first mention of something as simple as Wave Function (a BASIC tenet of Quantum Mechanics), the Cargo Cult will label you a KOOK.

        But remember: they can only view/understand you, based on their limited experience, education and BIASES.

         They have overlooked the fact that, if not for the hypotheses/theories and experimentation, regarding Quantum Mechanics: a plethora of modern conveniences, medical devices and the gear they so love, would not exist.

          Had scientists, chemists and inventors shared the doctrines of the Cargo Cult (Denyin'tologists), there would be no semiconductors, computer chips, LASERs, or Magnetic Resonance Imaging devices (MRIs).

                                         Solid State amps?

                                     OOPS (back to tubes)!

                                        Your Smart Phone?

                                        FA'GET ABOUT IT!

                                         Your car's GPS?

                                                NOPE!

    Then too: some may be willfully ignorant and just enjoy being contentious.

                        Others: obtuse, uneducated*, misinformed?

      *Typically, from what's been exhibited here: H.S. STEM, if that, would be a safe inference.

      Either way: the result, when the Cult begins it's rhetoric is a classic demo of the Dunning- Kruger Effect.

                                          But, I digress: 

       Bring up those pesky details, regarding the likes of QED, Dielectric Absorption, Poynting's theorem and possible application/effects, relative to frequency, that our musical signals are carried via photon or wave, outside the conductor and you're a KOOK?

         Again: the Cargo Cult can only understand anyone with an actual background, experience and education in Physics/QED, based on their beliefs, education, experience and biases

                                      Remember this?

     One anecdote  that some may find interesting: their walks in the woods and how Feynman's father would encourage him to look beyond the fact that something in nature exists, but into why and how.

     It saddened him that while attending college, during a visit home and one of their walks: his dad asked what he was learning in college.

     At that moment, he realized: if he tried to explain what he was learning, there was no way his dad could understand.                               

                            It wasn't an insult or condescension.

                                                Just reality.

                                    Oh well: let 'em go build a runway!

                                                    references:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applications_of_quantum_mechanics#:~:text=Examples%20include%20lasers%2C%20electron%20microscopes,systems%2C%20computer%20and%20telecommunication%20devices.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/08/13/what-has-quantum-mechanics-ever-done-for-us/?sh=37c459944046

https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/quantum-101/quantum-applications-today

          But: I'm a kook, because I believe in the SCIENCE, from which all that sprang?

     https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/five-practical-uses-spooky-quantum-mechanics-180953494/

           Einstein got that last one wrong (Quantum Entanglement), BUT- I still wish he'd been alive, when the Hubble Telescope proved, what he considered his, "greatest blunder" (his inability to bring symmetry to his field equation, without lambda).

  https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200507/history.cfm#:~:text=Einstein's%20original%20equations%20had%20been,how%20the%20universe%20will%20end.                                            How about that?

Another example of a hypothesis/theory, with no way to EXPERIMENT/MEASURE, what you're sure must be there, in some detectable way, or another.

                                               Just for fun:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/6-times-quantum-physics-blew-our-minds-in-2022/

                                            Happy listening!

Cables matter at least to my ear. I have tried the following Infigo, Cardas, clarity, Clarus, high fidelity, mavros, MIT, Fusion audio, anti cables, Ansuz, Tara labs, Kubala sosna, audio quest, kimber cables, purist, Nordost, shunyata. All of them have different sound signatures. I have tried more. Just can’t name them all. Cables matter. 

ossicle2brain

Power cables are psychoacoustic nonsense. Placebo effect and expectation bias ... On the other hand, the placebo effect does work.

Not so. Placebo effect won’t cure cancer for example.

As for expectation bias, many a doubting cynic has been surprised by the results a cable can make, so that would be in defiance of expectation bias. There’s a whole thread on just that here.

Is there some magical difference that occurs to the electricity after it comes out of the wall?   

Maybe that's the "special" electricity.  All the miles of electricity before the wall outlet doesn't matter.  We'll fix it at that last six feet before the amp.  

Power cables  are psychoacoustic nonsense.  Placebo effect and expectation bias.  The owners and sellers of these don't want to hear that.  Especially the sellers.

On the other hand, the placebo effect does work.

Pay little attention to those who rant and yet cannot share which brands/models of  higher end design cables they've actually tried or owned in a worthy system. 

I’m a dealer for Infigo audio. The company has experimented with the best copper and implements shielding that keeps outside noise out and are less likely to be affected by outside factors to just let the signal flow.  We do this in our USB cable for example. 

I'd be ready to make a poll and I'm pretty sure that, in 2023, the vast majority of audiophiles agrees on the fact that cables matter, that it's completely normal to hear differences and that spening a certain amount of cash on cables is, in fact, healthy.

Naysayers may think they are smarter than the rest, they are mostly unable to hear the difference and frustrated, due to diminutive hearing or a lousy system. 

Threads like this belong to 1971 when all amplifiers were thought to sound "alike".

@gs5556   YES! 

@nonoise Sounds much like Kenjit doesn't this poster.  

@jasonbourne71 Your history does omit some important facts.  Monster 300 (the original, not further Mark versions or Monster 400s) was simple in design and well executed.  For some reason, the future cable designer/manufacturer (I forgot his name & company) was entrusted with Monster's first interconnect.  It is a success over the typical really cheap and common RCA ICs at the time.  It has a bloomy and full bottom end, mostly neutral mid and rolled off highs, very pleasant, not highly resolving, but at the time, it was a step in the right direction for improving audio sound.  

So, don't tell me it's a bunch of baloney.  Sure, I've heard excretable, extremely expensive high cost/end cabling but I also have heard bad/cheap Pangea power and IC cabling in even high end systems where the owner typically was an electrical engineer and until shown the value of a quality higher end cable, said cabling doesn't matter (usually just power cabling).  

I’ve been a lifelong music lover, so I’ve also been pursuing audio systems and upgrades that get me closer to live performances. I recently upgraded my interconnects from Kimber Hero to AudioQuest Dragon (read Robert Harley’s review in The Absolute Sound).  My Speakers sounded more alive, more detailed in the midrange and highs, and better controlled in the bass region. I am now planning to upgrade power cables.

Better crossover components in speakers make a much bigger improvement in sound rather than replacing the internal wiring.  Replacing the electrolytic capacitors in less expensive speakers with roll film caps or at least bypassing the bigger electrolytics with a small film capacitor is the biggest bang for the buck.  I was doing that back in the 1990s.  Better inductors and resistors in the crossovers will help too.  Then after all that, internal wiring may or may not make a sonic difference.  It is typically not too difficult to get to the crossovers in speakers.  Film capacitors for a given value can be quite a bit larger than their electrolytic counterparts.  That’s why sometimes it better to just put a small value film cap in parallel with the large valued electrolytic.  Gain most of the improvement in sound that way.

@reimarc

Thank you for the inspiration.

but I would never spend more than a couple of $100 on them.

Wait till you hear better sounding interconnects. You might then gladly part with money to own that sound. ☺

If you ever decide to purchase expensive cables, buy second hand. I got my AQ Fire RCA cables for 1/4 of the original price.

I found this tutorial for a DIY interconnects using silver wires with interesting aircoil design geometry aimd to achieve low L and C.

TNT Aircoil MKII Interconnects

Product: TNT AirCoil mkII, no-compromise DIY interconnect cable
Manufacturer: not for sale, TNT-Audio DIY design
Manufacturing cost: between 100 and 250€
Reviewer: Piero Canova - TNT Italy
Reviewed: December, 2021

Tutorial for the building of TNT Aircoil MKII Interconnects

How do they sound?

We have tested these cables in several systems and configurations. Tubes, solid state, single ended, balanced, lengths ranging from 70 cm to 2 meters: there was never any issue of compatibility. I cannot honestly say they were clearly better than every other cable they were compared with, but for sure, they weren’t inferior to the other cables and, in many cases, we are talking about cables that are very, very expensive and exclusive. Several times the owners of the systems asked me to make, for them, some cables to replace those they had. Overall they are excellent, but in my view, they excel in four aspects: bass frequencies, soundstage, time coherence and speed. In bass frequencies the increase of clarity is evident; thin solid cores remove the bloat generated by thick fat cables, clearly improving the quality of sound. Thin wires minimize time smear allowing a much better coherence across the entire frequency spectrum. Low capacity design and no screening means a cable that is super fast in responding to transients. Honestly, I don’t have a good explanation for the soundstage, but width and depth of the virtual stage are substantially increased where the system allows for it.

    Then too: the typical SS component's total internal wiring can be measured in scant inches (copper AWG or not/if any at all*) and thus: inconsequential.

     The combined total, internal wiring of my PTP wired, Cary valve monoblocks = 16".

           *Many have all inputs, outputs and AC/power supply, attached directly to their PC boards.

 Open any amp or speaker and tell me what kind of wires do they use to connect them with? Copper AWG

                         The usual ignorance (willful, or otherwise).

                                         A FIRST PAGE replay:

        Many upscale equipment designers do use better wire within their products*, or: offer such as an upgrade.

         Even companies that manufacture PC boards take into account the dielectric constants of the material used and their effects on signal speed, among other factors.

               *ie: David Manley (of VTL) was already using George Cardas' wire, internally, back in the Eighties.      Emerald Physics offers WireWorld, OCC internal wiring, as an option/upgrade.

Because they effect the sound.

This is pretty simple. Two “rules”:

1) Buy only what you can afford

2) Buy what you prefer (after personal experience, listening for yourself)

But I have to say: whoever says a cheap box store $50 pair of speakers sounds just like a $50,000 pair of speakers, or some cheap headphones for 50 years ago… I want to have what you are smoking. Please share. It will save me a bunch of money (maybe for a super duper bike, which I obviously don’t ride 😉🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️)

yes, probably many speakers would sound better if they used better internal wire... some speaker companies like Dali does that on their higher end speakers...and offer that cable to their customers only...

To each is own, if you have a 100k system, you'll buy a $10k cable, if you have a 200k system, you'll buy a $50k cable.  I've aways stuck by 10awg copper cables and they have sound no different than others. Open any amp or speaker and tell me what kind of wires do they use to connect them with? Copper AWG

@cleeds ​​​​​​

Audiophiles have various preferences. You can’t lump them all together.

True. 

Reading reviews online, the majority I found appreciate musical amps, hence the connection to tubes. 

It’s a lot more difficult to get a good orchestral recording. Frequency range, dynamic range

I noticed that. Could you recommend a good recording? 

Infigo audio offers demos. Calvin johnson with Infigo Audio. 

@tjag I agree I like my tube system much better than my professional system that is much more accurate. Again I think the only way you can tell accuracy is to have a system that images razor sharp and reveals mistakes that the mixer didn't hear or he would fix them. Best

@donavabdear

I’m convinced by @rodman99999 and his article he pointed me to that cables do make a difference in a measurable way. So you all have convinced me! See I wasn’t a troll after all. Thanks.

​​​​​​​​​​You believe "up till now" based on an article not on experience.

I imagine there is a difference between audio engineers and audiophiles when it comes to listening to music.

Audio engineers or audio reviewrs could prefer an amplifier such as the Benchmark AHB2, which is neutral very detailed, but dull and lifeless. It exceeds in accurately playing the source fed into it.

An audiophile prefers musical amplifiers over analytical ones. Many use tubes to induce second harmonics into the music. So for me, if my system could improve on Anthony Hopkins’s voice by introducing some harmonics I would be very happy with that.

@cleeds My point about recording an actor making $20M and the amount of money a musician gets paid was not what I was talking about. If you have an actor like Tom Cruse, Anthony Hopkins, Jack Nicholson making $20M there is a boat load of pressure on the entire crew perhaps 150 people to do your job perfectly with no mistakes. Here’s what you have to understand, in an orchestra you set mics as you have for years, violins sound good with this mic at this distance if the trumpets are this far away and so and so. In movies you generally have 2 or 3 actors moving around a set or walking down a hallway through many different lights and with all the noises that the crew and efx people make inevitably. The miking in most cases means that you must remember all the dialogue first of all to get the cues correct then move the microphone based of the projection of the actor and look at his or her body language to guess on how loud they will deliver there lines and move the microphone so there is no shadows on any part of the set that the camera is seeing all the while making the actors sound consistent remembering that you can’t simply mic the actors over their heads you have to give them space considering proximity effect, and listening to the acoustics of that room to mic moving actors closer and farther from the frame line while making them sound the same and all this as you are walking backwards holding a 12 foot boom pole that is so sensitive that you can hear your own heartbeat in it. Orchestras are a walk in the park. Hope that helps.

@knownothing @thyname Wow thanks for understanding, honestly I came from physics, engineering, and acoustics in these fields they aren't understanding on audio goals being unverifiable they are antagonistic to it. I had the American rep of a big audio company at my house  yesterday (not name dropping), we hit it off perfectly and I was telling him how I was understanding the immeasurable attributes cables can make in a system because of you guys. He said his company felt the same way all the engineers fought very strongly against psychoacoustic principles so they didn't let in any "magical" effects that real people have in the audiophile world. He told me about a test they did with a CD player being set on 4 different kinds of racks like glass, wood, carbon fiber and such using long cables and everyone could tell the difference, this is a group of engineers that fought against "magical, unquantifiable" ideas, this experiment has a lot to do with changing these German engineers minds. 

I understand the frustration and I have a thick head I always put logic and physical laws above feelings, but it's clear I don't know everything and the magic is why I can't stop listening to music all my life. Thanks and Best!

Every time there is a thread on here or another forum containing the word ‘cable’ some collection of theorists join the thread and talk about graphs and what they know about resistance, and many of us have developed sensitive trolling antenna. 

Yup! And cannot blame us. It becomes tiresome. Take a look for example of Jason Bourne trolling in EVERY SINGLE CABLE THREAD. Always the first to reply with 3-4 consecutive posts saying the same thing. Over and over.

Therefore:

... forgive our collective fatigue

@donavabdear 

It’s refreshing to see the two-way learning in this thread.  I had written you off as coming here to make a point, rather than share a point of view and accept that it might be challenged and your initial perspective may be improved.  I was wrong about that.

Many of us who have developed strong opinions about hifi cabling based on our unique empirical experiences and some understanding of both theory and uncertainty associated with connecting a bunch of boxes with various electronics inside with wires forming a complex “system” driven by variously clean power from the wall and played in infinitely variable acoustic room environments.  Every time there is a thread on here or another forum containing the word ‘cable’ some collection of theorists join the thread and talk about graphs and what they know about resistance, and many of us have developed sensitive trolling antenna.  To folks that have learned to keep an open mind and trust theirs and others’ ears, it resembles a chorus of the flat earth society.  It’s tiresome and interferes with productive sharing.  So forgive our collective fatigue.

I do have to admit I am taken aback by your name dropping, even if it is sincere and in support of a point.  I am much more convinced and interested in your description of the physical and acoustic challenges of recording sound in complex and noisy environments with the sources moving around, and then trying to mix that in ways that make sense and support the moving images in a film.  That’s cool.  I regularly work with rich and famous people, and I find that name dropping NEVER succeeds as a validator of my thoughts or points, and it is almost always a turn off in a conversation.  Just a suggestion of something to consider in this and other discussions.

Back on topic, you said;

”I have no extreme reverence for knowing what the original record was I'm just saying if you didn't do the original recording then haw can you or anyone else talk about the proper image or the tightness of the bass, you can make the tightest bass ever just add gating, ducking, and lots of compression. Tighter and wider on every recording isn't always correct”

The improvement by good cables with respect to reproducing soundstage width and depth and timing aren’t some technicolor hallucination that appears on all recordings.  Mono doesn’t become stereo, flat or not particularly well-miked stereo recordings don’t grow width or depth that wasn’t captured or mixed into the final cut.  Good gear and wires just tell you more of whats going on, good and bad, and sometimes that can make you want to listen to certain recordings on your Bluetooth speaker in your kitchen rather than your two-channel big rig.

Enjoy the journey,

kn

donavabdear

I have recorded and mixed 100s of orchestras and it's much more forgiving than doing a recording of an actor who is getting $20M to act in a movie ...

I don't think there's any correlation at all between what an actor or musician gets paid, and the difficulty in recording them well. It's silly to claim otherwise. Certainly, you're entitled to your opinions, but recording the dialogue of a single voice - something easily transmitted over any telephone - is inherently simpler than recording the complex sounds and wide dynamic range of an orchestra. Of course, fidelity for film must be better than cell phone quality, but the phone proves it doesn't take much to record the identifiable qualities of a human voice.

... if you didn't do the original recording then haw can you or anyone else talk about the proper image or the tightness of the bass ...

You can't rely on any single recording. But you can rely on groups of recordings, some with consistent, repeatable, identifiable characteristics (such as the Mercury Living Presence series), to tune the sound of a system. If you also make your own recordings, as I sometimes do, the task is made easier.

@donavabdear : having a dedicated room solely for two channel audio is huge. It is a great starting point. Now, in addition to two (matched pair) speakers, you would need the 2-channel equipment. Preferably dedicated to two-channels (stereo), and not multichannel. Amp(s), preamp, DAC, etc. etc. All two channel. And of course, room treatments, which I think you are pretty familiar with and knowledgeable. You can then experiment with cables, ideally with a return policy and no risk trial. There is no substitute to experimenting for yourself. And it is fun. That is if you enjoy experimenting. Not a chore, if it becomes a chore, and frustrating, it’s not worth dealing with. We all do what we enjoy. This is a hobby, not a job.

Enjoy the process, and hopefully the results.

@thyname 
Yes I do have a dedicated room for 2 track. This afternoon 6/22 a person from Steinway and Sons is going to look at my room so everything may change. I'm a little intimidated because of a lot of things I don't have on par with great audiophile systems. I have a Steinway Spirio grand piano that plays back perfectly, it is the best hifi piece of equipment I own it is in its own room built for the piano, no transducer of any kind, it's perfect (well it has 1000 levels of dynamic resolution for every key which is good enough. I've recorded 1000s of pianos but never got any recording to sound like a real one. I'm convinced by @rodman99999 and his article he pointed me to that cables do make a difference in a measurable way. So you all have convinced me! See I wasn't a troll after all. Thanks.

@cleeds I have recorded and mixed 100s of orchestras and it's much more forgiving than doing a recording of an actor who is getting $20M to act in a movie. They don't want to do looping and you are always on defense in production sound there are HMI light that are often buzzing and if you need to tell the DP his light needs to be fixed he'll tell the director the sound guy is going to take an hour out of your day for his sound while I relight, there is constantly problems like that even on huge shows. Recording a single actor or 20 actors in a room is the hardest mixing and recording I've done by far you can't make a mistake in live the mistake is over in studio you can simply fix it (studio is the easiest). You couldn't be more wrong about that part of your post. Sure recording an actor in the studio is easy except for matching the production sound in a studio takes a lot of talent and listening effort. The microphone boom operator IMO requires the most talent for listening, when I did that I would cary the boom with the main microphone everywhere I went with my headphones on all day so I would get to know the polar pattern of the microphone, in the studio you point the microphone at instrument that doesn't move or interact with other noisy things while they are changing positions, recording music is easy compared with production sound. 

I have no extreme reverence for knowing what the original record was I'm just saying if you didn't do the original recording then haw can you or anyone else talk about the proper image or the tightness of the bass, you can make the tightest bass ever just add gating, ducking, and lots of compression. Tighter and wider on every recording isn't always correct.

@reimarc 

Clever.

donavabdear

Audiophiles give me the impression that they can evaluate the proper mixing goal of the artist, producer and audio engineer by saying things like this or that sounds natural or to the presentation or the image is thus and so. It is impossible to make judgements like that if the image is bigger with a particular component or cable how do you know that's what was originally recorded. you can't.

That is why judgment about how a system sounds has to be made over time, and why I distrust "shootout-out" style demos. 

Extreme reverence over the "original recording" is a bit of a red herring. For enjoyment and demo purposes, I like to make my own recordings. But what microphones were used? How far were they from the stage? What mic preamp? Changing those things change the sound.

The notion that it is takes some exceptional, extreme talent or expertise to record, say, a famous actor's voice is absurd. Most people can recognize a familiar voice over a lo-fi cell phone. A real recording challenge would be a symphony orchestra, or a intimate jazz band.

I have over 70 speakers in my house and 4x dolby atoms systems so new expensive cable would cost a fortune

That’s an insane number of speakers for one single house. I understand your frustration @donavabdear . I agree with you, attempting to cable them all to function independently and simultaneously, including their electronics, will cost a fortune. But I guess helicopters noise from the ceiling sounds good enough for me in my modest 5.1.2 HT, so here is that. I have basic cabling in my lowly HT, I don’t really pay much attention to having a great HT.

My question for you is, out of those 70+ speakers, can you isolate the best two speaker you have (a matching pair) for stereo, 2-channel playback? Perhaps in a dedicated room for two channel audio, with dedicated 2-channel equipment (not multichannel). That should not cost too much in wiring. Only two speakers out of your 70+. Just a wild idea 😱

@thyname  @steakster 

Thanks for your kind words. I’ve occasionally found that what we sense as aggression or arrogance is often a cover for uncertainty and sincere confusion or the frustration of inability to communicate more clearly 😉🙏🏻

@donavabdear 

So glad you understood what I’ve tried to communicate 👌🏻 - if you’d like to read a little more of my thoughts regarding how to know when a component or room sounds realistic and accurate to any recording we had not experienced the actual sound engineering of, I just made another post in another thread @dean_palmer started on high fidelity - https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/when-are-speakers-considered-hi-fi-and-not-mid-fi?lastpage=true&page=2#2575397

@reimarc 

Very interesting and smart.

I am sure your ICs sound good, the intressting question is how good? 

Have you compared the performance of your ICs to known brands in the market, or just to the Mogamis?

I was always wondering if PVC is not a really bad insulator for signal wires: the very large chlorine atoms with three pairs of unpaired electrons in their outer shell are bound to interact with the electro-magnetic field around a wire. But I did not act on my suspicion until I found XLR ICs with silver wire running in a PTFE tube and a shielding mesh of silver-plated copper. They are made in HK and the price was right and thus I bought two pairs from my DAC to my preamp and from my preamp to my power amps, replacing the Mogamis I had for years. I can only say that they did indeed make a significant difference, not ground-shaking but clearly audible and in a very pleasant way: more clarity and headroom, especially with solo voice (Shirley Bessey with "Big Spender", for example, where I can now understand each single word), but also deeper sound stage and dry and punchy bass. Overall money really well spent. Since then I began making my own speaker cables, by running a single 5N silver wire in a PTFE tube filled with Argon gas. The latter has a dielectric constant similar to air, meaning almost unimpeded signal transmission, but has no corrosive effects on the silver conductor. A small tank of Argon can be rented in any hobby brewery-supply shop, and after filling the cable I seal both ends with sticky heat shrink. These speaker wires work very well and are not at all overly bright, as many audiophiles claim it to be a silver drawback: great headroom and extension, clear voicing and again taught and yet powerful bass. So, form my own experimental experience I can attest that wires can indeed make a significant difference in the overall musical experience, but I would never spend more than a couple of $100 on them.

@kevn Thank you for your thoughtful post. 
Anthony Hopkins is one of my favorite people I've ever worked with, we did a movie in the Czech Republic. Understanding how something should sound like an actors voice is a really hard job, what the boom operator does is he or she listens to the way the actor is projecting and places the microphone just off the frame line all the while listing to the polar pattern and off axis collation of the voice. I used the Sennheiser MKH -50's as my go to microphones for most actors but even then behind the mixer I can't really judge his voice as well as the boom operator. When I spoke to hime directly, I got an idea of how his voice actually sounded. 
The reason why I mentioned him was because I could only evaluate the recording after it went through all my microphones and electronics it is rare that you hear someones voice like that face to face, and most everyone knows what he supposedly sounds like.
Audiophiles give me the impression that they can evaluate the proper mixing goal of the artist, producer and audio engineer by saying things like this or that sounds natural or to the presentation or the image is thus and so. It is impossible to make judgements like that if the image is bigger with a particular component or cable how do you know that's what was originally recorded. you can't.
The best way to evaluate an accurate set of speakers is listen for mistakes, maybe a punch-in that is off time or a reverb setting on the 2nd viola that was brought in late If the studio mixer left those mistakes in he didn't hear them if your revealing speakers did pick up the problems you probably have better speakers than the mixer did.

Your 2nd question - I will test some new cables I have over 70 speakers in my house and 4x dolby atoms systems so new expensive cable would cost a fortune. I'll order some of the cables that @rodman99999 showed me I agree exactly with their philosophy about cables.

I really liked what you said about audiophiles and logic, I may be barking up the wrong tree about technical issues, but these guys on this forum are not dumb they would know that a logical fallacy or a physical law always trumps feelings about electronics. I was wrong. Professional recording and audiophile communities are completely opposite of course there are exceptions.

I also loved what you said about the nuance and beauty of the electronic field around the conductor, true this idea is so misunderstood probably because electronics were not taught like that. 

Last question you asked, Yes some cables sound amazing compared to others, this is a scary thing to say cables are simple compared to the internal electronics in components that put the audio signal through gymnastics all the time.

You have a great attitude, hopefully you didn't think I was trolling or just wanting to fight as many here think of me. Best

Bad cables are like a dirty clogged pipe in your sink.  It’s just that simple. 

@kevn : Great post. Unfortunately, I am afraid you wasted your time. Donna is not going to read it. Too long for him. Besides, he just enjoys himself too much.

First, I am truly glad you haven’t made your mind up, having just started out on your audiophile journey : )

Oh he has made up his mind. Just read one of his “why audiophiles don’t get it” threads, especially the very long one staring the famous Cin Dyment in disguise. His journey is painful. And very frustrating indeed. I feel for him. My guess is, he found it much easier and convenient to troll audiophiles in the internet, rather than working to accomplish anything real with his system. This is NOT about trying and listening. It’s plain vanilla trolling, or, as someone eloquently put it earlier here, sealioning