Question for cable/wire naysayers.....

The only thing i say is 
Spend as much as possible, i said as much as you can on all wires 
Good chance you won't have to upgrade like every thing else

A lot of the difficulty in obtaining audible differences in cables can be placed right at the door of wire directionality. A cable or interconnect in the wrong direction just won’t sound right. I’m referring to unshielded cables. But even shielded cables would sound better if they were manufactured with wire directionality in mind. Also cable comparisons must be performed slowly. It takes a day or two for the mechanical electrical interface of the cable connector to be reestablished. Ditto the power cord plug.

Cables (PC, SC and interconnects) absolutley make a difference and those who take issue with that statement haven't tried cables at the right level, don't have gear where it will really makes much difference or don't have the ear for this hobby.  I have tried and upgraded various cables over the years with, as one would expect, varying results but always some measure of improvement.  Most recently, I upgraded Acoustic Zen SC to Synergistic Research Atmoshphere Level 4.  Wow - what an improvement - across all comparison criteria.  That caused me to switch out all my Shunyata Anaconda IC's to SR Atmosphere Level 4's.  Again; the improvement was undeniably discernable, even by sceptical listeners (wider, deeper, clearer, more "real").  At that point, I honestly didn't think I could wring out any further improvements to my system by cable upgrades until I tried the new Synergistic Galileo UEF interconnects.  I was the sceptic then when someone suggested they were palpably better than the level 4's in, again. a very obvious way.  They clearly were (no pun intended).  I have upgraded to the Galileo UEF Interconnects and they are the absolute bomb.

I believe in the sufficiency argument. Once you get to the level of a competently engineered cable, there is no ROI beyond that. As been said in this forum and other places, if you spend more on speaker cables and interconnects than what you can find at Blue Jeans Cable, you’ve spent too much.

I find the talk about skin effects (stranded vs. solid) to be baseless. A lifetime ago, I worked for a test and measurement company that had to measure electrical signals in the radio frequency (RF) range. We had to use exotic substrates and different metalization schemes to deal with skin effect and insertion loss but this was for signals starting in the GHz range. Audio is in the Hz and KHz range; at least a 1Mx below that threshold. These cable marketing guys borrow selectively from the electrical engineering lexicon to sound competent.

I’d take the exotic cable money and spend it on better speakers and hear a real difference.

@op. I guess I'm a naysayer.  I believe in using decent quality, well-constructed cables that fit a particular need. Once there, though, what I don't hear on any of my systems or on anyone else's or in any shop demos are the immediate night and day improvements many claim to have obtained.  I don't have much experience with megabuck, exotic cables.

Yes, differences in ICs and speaker cable, primarily.  Digital and power, not so much.  Subtle differences, if starting from something competent.  Never anything like swapping out a competent speaker jumper with 3 inches of megabuck wire and finding 6db difference on the volume knob, all of sudden not needing the beloved pair of subwoofers, miraculously expanding stage width and depth to the neighbors' houses, taking down half the room treatments, etc.

That's what I don't hear.  A slight tightening of the bass on a long speaker run, a hair less noise when swapping out all the ICs, a very slight smoothing of the upper mids when swapping in bi-wire solid core v. large gauge stranded singles...sure, I believe I hear something like that occasionally, but not always.