idc:
storsvante:Do you not think the unifying theory is the acoustic placebo effect...?
No, for three reasons. One is that some differences are clear and the easiest way to hear/see that is to compare a £1 phono interconnect or Scart out of a £1 shop with anything that is at least made to a decent standard and you really should hear/see a difference.
The other is the wife. She rarely listens to music, but she can pick out different bit rates better than I can and she hears/sees differences in cables.
Thirdly, everything in hifi is made up of various components that work better someways than others and are built to differing standards. Otherwise we would all be buying a Tesco midi system for £50 and there would be no audiophile industry. It is streatching credibility to say that all audiophile products are just placebos, especially since so many report sound differences between even remarkably similar products.
Ah, but there are several different factors at play here.
1) I'm talking about USB cables specifically and digital cables generally. Not disputing that analogue interconnects and speaker cables influence the sound. For analogue transmission, a small phase shift, distortion or whatever will directly impact on the result. Digital transmission on the other hand can be much more tolerant and doesn't really compare. It's like comparing sending a message in morse code, received and reconstructed by the other end, vs an analogue recording of the message itself. Clearly the 2nd case requires much more from the cable whereas in the 1st example the cable only needs to be good enough for the receiver to be able to be able to tell the difference between beep and no beep.
2) Your wife... How about you do a blind test on her to really test this? Swap around your digital cables a couple of times, without her knowing which one she is listening to, and see if she can consistently tell them apart!
3) 100% agreed, clearly everything is not placebo. I'm just saying it exists, and may play a greater part in some product categories than others.