Is it too late to pile on? I've been following the discussion with some amusement, but the last "big" post [re: timbre and Handel, from 2x6] is what brought me from lurking to contributing. I was trying not to pick sides, but dang, y'all made it hard to keep my mouth shut.
Handel did not have a spectrum analyzer, or he would have realized that timbre is not subjective, but instead a quality that is, today, easily tested (the ANSI definition is accurate, but incomplete). A violin and a clarinet are different because they produce different harmonics - not because of some mystery magic we can't define. The "emotional" impact is not what we were debating - it is surely not defined by science, but I wouldn't put it past 'em to try it.
And judging wines by their chemical composition is not even a little bit like detecting a DIFFERENCE between wines, which is what the "meterheads" are attempting to do with cable, or receivers, or what have you.
Is LCR the end-all, be-all of cable behavior? Perhaps not, but the "other factors" that "do affect signal transmission" - what are these? The skin effect, the current-bunching, the dielectric polarizing, these may (and do) take place - but they still just attenuate certain aspects of the signal by simple LCR principles.
"the speaker's impedance is in series with that of the speaker wire, therefore, speaker wire can actually modify the speaker's frequency response" The speaker's frequency response remains as it was. The signal reaching it may have changed.
As was already said here - the cable can only detract. It can't "sound brighter" or whatever - unless the source was "brighter" to begin with.
If the difference amounted to 1% or so, the number I keep seeing here, I'm certain some golden ears would be scoring 100% on the DB tests. 1% is huge in most musical instances.
Try playing 1% of the notes wrong in a Beethoven sonata and let me know who still thinks they don't hear it.
It's fair to say some people may hear differences day to day or minute to minute. In those instances, I throw this out for debate: Right now, my own ears are ringing - late night, loud band, etc. If you put your ear close to mine...will you hear it?
No? Why? Because the mystery of what goes on in my mind (and yours) is far - far - greater and untested and undefined than the "mystery" of what makes a good speaker cable. I'm willing to wager on any given day, the atmospheric pressure changing both the size of your house and the pressure in your nose will affect the sound more than the cables. And I'd bet again you could measure it.
You might even hear it.
