Question for cable/wire naysayers.....

@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.

Different speaker cables, for example, sound differently from one another because each ALTERS the signal giving you the illusion of more air, deeper soundstage, more bass, etc.

If you truly want to hear what your amplifier sounds like, the most logical approach would be to have speaker wire that is exactly the same wire that goes to your amp’s binding posts. Also, the same wire should go from your speaker’s binding posts to its drivers.

One must use some common sense here. Adding some boutique speaker cables does not unlock something magical hidden inside your amp. Also, and I dispise when people use this expression, cables don’t "get out of the way of the music". That’s the biggest load of BS in audio. In fact, it's just the opposite. The differences in cabling you hear is the cable doing something to the signal.

Newsflash: Your audio components do not have $4,000 wiring inside. If you truly wanted to get out of the way of the music, your interconnects and speaker cables would be the same as what’s inside. The sound you perceive to be different is because boutique cabling alters the original signal to the point where it’s so manipulated you hear more of this, or less of that.

I wish I read a post like this 21 years ago. Maybe some young audiophile will read this one.

Indeed

I was a sceptic once. Used blue jeans ICs and SCs..

Now I DIY my own stuff using quality materials. There is an easily discernable difference. I'd never go back.

You nays can throw as much pseudo science around as the cable manufacturers do, just from the other side. I understand that the absurd prices are absurd. But we’re not talking ROI, we’re taking efficacy...

Some say they hear a difference, some say they can't.  The ones who hear a difference claim the ones who can't are deaf, and the ones who can't say the ones who can are just trying to justify their purchase.  I don't recall if anyone ever tried to defend the cost/markup of 5K+ interconnects and 20k+ speaker cables, even if they think they sound amazing.  So that's pretty much it, as far as I can see.