A butt-load spent in cables - how much improvemt?

>>$20K spent on cables may give you 4%-5% higher performance<<

How does anybody ascertain the percentage increase or decrease in performance for somebody else's system?

In the absence of any "standard", differences are purely subjective BTW, it's one of the dumbest things I've read here and that covers a lot of ground.

Cables are system and listener dependent. It's that simple.

How does anybody ascertain the percentage increase or decrease in performance, period? I can understand the notion of the magnitude of improvement, but percentages seem to me to be false precision.

Tbg -ditto

Hi Ted, I'm not saying all cables sound the same. Cables could bring out the full potential of the system (provided there is already a musical sounding system and excellent system synergy), but it is unlikely they will add much more "musicality" to it. In case of a sytem with bad system synergy you cannot expect from cables (no matter what they cost) that they will "transform" the entire sound into something "magically". It is a fact that most cable advertisements are giving the impression that cables are capable of elevating the sound of a system, whatever the system and whatever the synergy, to a higher level of excellence, but this is absolutely not true.

Chris

Dazzdax. I certainly would not go so far as to say cables cannot elevate the sound to a higher level of excellence. Does this not imply a zero improvement?