I just cannot resist jumping in on the "wire" debate every time I see it arise. I used to be firmly planted on one side of this argument until it finally donned on me - IT DOESN'T MATTER..!!!
Toward all the debate about subjective judgment .vs. objective measurement… It Doesn’t Matter !!!! Human hearing is a “perception”, you cannot argue this fact. And not only is it a “perception” it’s an individual perception at that. That means that everybody “hears” differently. We all process sound uniquely based on numerous attributes of sound that have been identified “so far”, including, but certainly not limited to the shape of our pinnae, inner ear and mostly how our brains "process" the signals. If you “think” you hear something – then you do – end of argument. Or if you “think” you do not hear something – then you don’t – end of argument. Just because man has not yet identified all the attributes of sound that affect our hearing “perception”, does not mean they don’t exist. Not to mention modern science hasn’t invented a machine to measure them. Hearing is no different than any of our other senses. Does everyone perceive all colors the same? No. What about taste? Some people like vanilla ice cream, some like chocolate – why? Nobody really knows. But the point is, why should any individual care about what flavor of ice cream somebody else likes or dislikes – I mean really – answer me this question. It Doesn’t Matter. Does this mean that those that like Vanilla are right and those that like chocolate are wrong? Of course not.
Now having said that, I also believe that with years of critical listening experience & training, one can become quite astute at identifying “differences” in sound that various wire “can” make, some very subtle, and “to that person” not necessarily everybody. I too have been thru hundreds of painful hours of volume matched to the tenth of a volt as measured at the speaker binding posts with a digital Fluke multi-meter ABX tests. And like others have experienced here, many times I have been able to identify by a statistically significant margin which wire I was listening to. And so have many of my fellow audiofool friends. Not only that, but each of us almost always identifies and quantifies the same differences. But even though we almost always agree on “what” the differences are that we hear – we also usually have different “preferences”. So even though we may each describe the particular sonic personality of a given speaker wire the same, not all of us will prefer the same speaker wire.
It has been my experience, that the farther up the super-sonic, space-modulated, so-called boutique wire ladder you go, the more they actually “effect” the sound – as in they are passive equalizers in some manner. And if you demo/try enough of them, you are bound to stumble upon one that will have the synergy with your components/speakers/room that you “prefer”. I am an I/T guy by profession, 30+ years. And as such, started out as an ole mainframer, tend to think very logically. And logically, my mind says, it makes no sense to invest more funds in connecting wires than the components themselves cost – think about that one a minute Spock. To that end, I seek out wire, which is based on sound, known to man at this time, electrical theory. i.e. the transmission of frequencies in the human hearing range thru conductors. I want my “wire” to be neutral, accurate and faithful to the signal passing thru it – not to change it. I prefer to do the “sonic tweaking” to my “preferred” sound via components I choose and/or the tubes installed. And make no mistake, tubes can and do sound dramatically different. And their differences can be measured quite easily with common tools man has already invented.
If anyone would like to hear about a cheap and easy experiment you can do yourself regarding “wire” – that just might astound you, as it did me - PM me directly and I’d be happy to share. It got me off the wire-of-the-month merry-go-round once and for all. You need to be a smidge of a DIY'er and only if you're interested in wires that possess little to no sonic signature of their own and are pretty inexpensive. They won't win you any bragging rights at the monthly audio club meeting, but they will win out sonically in most ABX tests against the voodoo science, snake-oil, fairy-dust exotics.