How much money do you want to waste?

First of all, one must agree that no cables in the world can make your system sound better. You pick the cable that can least degrade the sound coming out of your system.
On that basis, different cable design should sound differently in your system. How well you like each difference is entirely judge by your taste of sound, like cooking, some like it sweeter, some like it more salty. Since all cables are subject to electrical reactions, the same cable can sound different in your systems than in another system. Try connecting the same interconnects in different positions in your system, you will appreciate what I have just said. If you hear no difference at all, then, you are one of the luckiers ones who don't need to spend or shouldn't be spending anything on cables !

My point - without saying it - was that you, Viggen, mistated my argument. Thank you for your reasoned response. Yes, there is a relationship between the open-ness advocated in eastern philosophies and the receptivity, "letting go" to objective attachment, that I discussed regarding music listening (or any apprehension of "beauty"). They are the same things. I agree with you that our technology of stereo equipment will never approximate "Reality" (ignoring the fact that no-thing escapes from reality) in the sense that we will never, in an objective sense, copy music playing with a stereo rendition. However - and this is also an objectivist's bias - this contains another implicit assumption, namely, that it is impossible to replicate the EXPERIENCE subjectively. In other words, we should not only be trying to reproduce sound in an objective sense (sound), but also reproduce the dynamic of cognitive fading (receptivity)that occurs both in stereo listening and "real" (music) listening. When one accepts blindly the assumption that objective cues are most important then one, by default, assumes that the dynamic subjective experience can not be approximated to a greater and greater degree that exceeds the objective level's ability to approximate. I am saying that, yes, objective qualities are important - Science is important, objective thinking is important - but an attachment to believing that that is more important than the cognitive fading dynamic is irrational because it denies the nature of the experience in one's own mind as one listens to music. When the thinking-attached deny other potential experiences of reality because they are not objectively derived, they effectively deny the evidence of the listening experience that they themselves are engaged in. This is a denial of their own potential to listen deeper into the music, and into "Reality."

Oh yea, for those of you who just HATE this kind of talk, I will, on your behalf, rename this thread, "How much time do you want to waste?" :)

Yes, it goes without saying that nothing can recreate "experience", and, as Zen would explain, any attempts to reconstruct retrospective phenomenon is further from reality:

I think audiophiles have often experienced a temporal sense of accomplishment where they've reached a point where they think their system is perfect until the next better cd player, speaker or cable comes along. Our subjectiveness is often fooled into thinking how much more real or better our system sounds by a tweak or an upgrade, but, like I said, it is only temporal. I would explain that their image of reality is projected onto their system rather than the system recreating reality. And we only realize this when we compare to a better system or live music.

This doesn't mean our enjoyment is diluted because it is not a perfect copy of the original live performance. However, we have intrinsic want to achieve the ability to replicate that live "experience".

Yes, the need to upgrade and the end result of an audiophile's achievements are nothing objective. However, in achieving this goal, the actions and science are purely objective.

Yes, Viggen, people screen their world thorough a lens of subjective interpretation. Kant told us this many moons ago and Kuhn showed us how it even applies to the subjective lens of a scientist conducting scientific method (favoring confirmation of existing scientific truths as opposed to refutation). What I am saying, though, is that as one "seeps" into the music and the mind releases the attachment to objectify sound, the lens of subjectivity necessarily fades. In other words, "subjectivity" is composed of several prisms of interpretation. The surface lens composes the sense of subjective self and is structured of thinking about the "self". It is this level of cogniticizing that I am saying fades in its influence over the preceptive mind as a whole and this DYNAMIC precipitates greater receptivity to the musical message (their are other perceptive lens that do not fade, such as Kant's a priori space/time lens, which is why, in the deepest listening experiences we are more sensitive to spatial discontinuities in the stereo rendition at that time and less sentitive to "detail" that bounds perception of sound as an object, i.e. why with SE amp's detail seems less important an issue when you finally seep into the music and the more natural spatial presentation, in terms of its existential correctness, becomes intoxicating.) Subjective interpretive matrices CHANGE as that same mind, in whole, releases its instinct to objectify that which it experiences, including music.

Yes, in order to catalyze this experience, at least in stereo, the (objective) stereo piece must be used, but that does not mean that the objective is separate from the mind that created it or arranges it in a system. In fact, the subjective is causually prior to the objective; the mind that chooses a component is prior to the arrangement of that technology-component in his technology-system (just as the inventor's subjective mind is prior to the objective creation). Objective is casually dependant on subjective; they are not separate, except in the mind that wishes to make them separate (as in, the mind that desires to separate reality into objects).

Regarding neurosis in audio, yes, many people's ego structure (reflection of their self to their self) requires that they compete with others. These are the same people who are atached to the objectifiacation of reality, then carried into their stereo experience. All listening minds are not the same, however - regardless of our knee-jerk egalitarianism to the contrary. Pointing to this type of mind as what I am talking about misses the point. They may be the mean, but I am talking about a different subjectivity that is not tied for its identification on its powers of objectifiaction (hence, able to release that level of subjectivity easier and seep into the music).

Yes, I agree, the notion that the subjective sound - the "absolute sound" - of live music is transferrable into all subjective experiences, stereo included, is a nice marketing idea, but it is not realizable through objective means, IMHO (somthing I once told HP when I wrote for him in another lifetime). But, it can be replicated in subjective ways: the beauty I experience, beyond thought, when enraptured by the sight of the sunset, or her face, or the beauty in the music, is the SAME beauty. At deeper levels of perceiving - as the sense of subjective fades as its delf-defining objectifying fades - the experience of beauty converges into one. This is why, regardless of our self structures, we are all drawn to music, or the sunset, or her face. There is no-thing more "Zen" than that.

As I said, though, you must be willing to engage the experiment - to let go of you self - to confirm what i am saying. Until then, you will only interpret the experiences that exist beyond your-self as non-existent. That's the way the "absolute beauty" in all of the above has set it up.

Thanks for your response, sincerely.