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

I commonly hear people say that they want their system to sound like the "real thing".  But of course that is never going to happen since you do not know what the "real thing" originally sounded like.  What you mean, I suspect, is that you want it to sound like your interpretation of what you think the "real thing" should sound like.

@crozbo It helps a lot to use recordings you made yourself, because you were there when it was recorded, huh! 😀

If you even get a chance to try equipment that supports AES48 (which is likely a bit more expensive) I'd be interested to hear if you still hear the same differences.

When the standard isn't supported, the shield of the cable becomes the signal return path, just as it is in an RCA cable. So its more susceptible to noise and the construction of the cable itself. Not only that but you lose immunity to ground loops. Cable immunity and immunity to ground loops are two things that the balanced line system is supposed to eliminate, along with reduced noise (Common Mode rejection of noise; CMRR).

So if the standard isn't supported, you're likely to hear cable differences. I think this is why the single-ended vs balanced thing is an on-going thing in high end audio since so little of high end audio equipment supports the standard.

I know that cables make a difference sometimes but the acoustic treatment of the listening area always makes a huge difference way more than any cable . I had a set of transparent audio reference cables for many years and I must say that benchmark media speaker cable did not sound worse or different.

Cables make a major difference with the effect increasing with your systems ability to resolve but with power cables I think it’s much more physics with build quality and wire gauge than with interconnects. I’ve yet to hear a better resolving $300-500 12ga cable beat a <$40 10ga cable from Amazon on a power amp. Some make it sound “cleaner” but it won’t allow the amp to pull out as much detail and richness. It just makes it sound more analytically clean and sanitized with less detail. Need to step up massively in price (15x+)to get the same or better performance with 10ga+ equivalent cables. This is on a mid-$10k’s system with a $8500 power amp and ~$20k speakers connected by ~$1k speaker cables. Just stupid how much many cable companies charge for their jewelry.

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!