Yes, cables do make a difference -- regardless of price...

Good for them! I wish them the best! You can disregard my credentials if it makes you uncomfortable. The important question is when are we going to get any good evidence for cables? I would love to learn more from any cable manufacturers or positive-claim cable enthusiasts who have scientific citations or personal micro-experiments that can lead to further investigation!

Partially correct, except that I am promoting skepticism about positive claims and specifically suggesting a path towards proving those claims, rather than asking you to simply believe it because of my credentials.

I am always intrigued by these discussions. I keep hoping to learn something new beyond "I'm convinced" and "to those who naysay," etc. Some kind of useful tidbit...but there really is nothing new so far. There are some mildly flawed studies that compare cheap RCAs versus XLRs in AES. There are also broad claims from authority: some smart guy uses special cable woven from yak hair soaked in silver nitrate, blah blah.

But, critically, if you think you hear changes in the tonality that should be measurable and not just by ABX tests, but with a decent ADC that itself measures well. Just record the DAC output or the speaker output (using a calibrated mic), swap cables, and do a null test by comparing the signal spectrums. It should be evident in those measurements as to why you think you hear a difference.

And competent and scientifically sophisticated cable manufacturers (as well as power conditioners, etc.) would be trumpeting their product measurements all day long if they in fact had any clear measurement differences to promote.

I have seen some research work on people being able to detect sounds outside of the typical 20kHz window, though it seems largely irrelevant to music reproduction, so while there might be yet-to-be-understood science out there, the default intellectually honest posture is wait-and-see while instead focusing on what we know impacts audio reproduction.

In any case, I have a BSEE and MSEE in information theory and signal processing, as well as PhD work in cognitive science and am very skeptical of the ideas and claims made here concerning cables.

Positive claims should be backed by Missouri-like resolve: show me!

Sure, but it certainly would be more fascinating!

Now that is interesting and something I hadn't seen before. It is, alas, from 2013 when jitter was a more pressing concern than today with contemporary USB transports, but it does raise some interesting questions. I think it needs a retest!

I look forward to more evidence in the future! I don't see anything here except bland vitriol and bald assertions. There are some negative results conducted by Amir at ASR that seem to fit with expectations based on conventional science, but who knows what the future holds?

I think it would be great if all the smart folks who produce cables showed some evidence. I'm always attracted to the unexpected and novel.

@decooney Just skimmed through it. It's fairly high level and just presents measurements that support their general theory wrt frequency effects, EMI, etc. What is missing is a simple, clear series of experimental measurements of the impact on sound reproduction. That is, like the null test I suggested above, it would be awesome to see the cables being deployed in a reproduction chain and that they measurably show improved fidelity to the original signal, reduced noise, or reduced distortion.

It's such a simple test! Much more simple than their crazy modeling of skin effects, etc. If their cables reduce distortion and noise, then I think they have a home run opportunity to show that it impacts the reproduction chain. I would love to see those results!

@decooney Sure, but also note that the NASA email (granting it's authentic) is concerning a laser diode application that bears little resemblance to audio-scale electrical properties.

So, the test is very simple: take a high resolution audio stream consisting of music (you can do single tones/sweeps later). Connect the streamer to an excellent DAC using modern USB cable. Connect DAC analog output to excellent ADC using Test Cable A. Record audio. Replace Cable A with Cable B (try a bunch of budget through to expensive). Record, record, record. Align the digital signals and subtract them from one another using standard software tools. Any residual signal represents differences between the cables. If the residual spectrum is bass-rich, that might be called "tubby" by the subjectivists. More high frequency might be called "more resolving." Fair enough! 

OK, so we looked at analog XLR interconnects in the above scenario. We can also do speaker cables by getting a calibrated microphone like the Umik-1 from MiniDSP and recording the track again through the streamer > DAC > amp > speaker chain. Swap cables and then compare once again to look for why folks think there's an obvious difference.

Do the same kind of thing for power cables, power conditioners, ethernet cables, etc. There may be differences! The SPDIF cables from 2013/2017 mentioned in posts above showed flaws, but SPDIF is notorious for jitter issues, especially in the old days.

We need some exciting results for the other categories of cables!