Re: Audiophoolery. 'Cable Break In' - I never knew that!
Argus 25's comments have reminded me that I had an example where cable types really did make a difference.
It was several decades ago now, so I don't remember all the details, but it involved connecting a reel to reel tape recorder to a tuner amplifier using a 5-pin DIN to 4 Phono-plug cable. I had an unexpectedly poor treble response which was fixed when I used a different cable. I had several 4-way screened cables, and it turned out that they fell into 2 groups, one group had a capacitance of 100 to 150pF (core to ground), the other group were 500 to 600pF (all cables were similar length). The tuner-amp had high value series resistors to the DIN socket (specified for current drive) and, coupled with the high capacitance cable, produced a very noticeable treble roll-off.
My audio cables still have the labels showing their capacitance so I don't get caught again. The low capacitance cables could easily have justified a higher price! As Argus said, instances like this could support the "cables make a difference" argument, when actually it is a design bug (feature?) of the particular tuner-amp.
Stuart
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