[monkeyboylee]

  This whole cable upgrade thing has me a bit mystified.  First off...I am not an electrician, or an electrical engineer, just curious.  I would guess that the controlling electrical property of the cable is the overall resistance...connectors, solder, conductor all in the mix, and that lowest possible resistance is desired.  If this is true, consider the equation:
 
RESISTANCE = (RESISTIVITY x LENGTH) / AREA
 
Resistivity is a property of the metallic conductors in the system.
Length could be considered the length of the cable.
Area is the total cross sectional area of one conductor, which likely has multiple individual wires or strands.
 
Ignoring the influence of the connectors and the solder, and considering only the cable...
 
The difference in resistivity between copper and silver is very small...silver is a better conductor but not by much.  If the resistivity of copper is 1.0, then by comparison silver would be about 0.95.  So changing the conductors from solid copper to solid silver and leaving everything else the same would lower the resistance by about 5%.
 
Assuming the average cable is about 48" long, reducing the cable length to 36" (with no other changes) would reduce the resistance by 25%.  I have never seen a claim that a shorter cable length improves the SQ.
 
Similarly, an increase in the diameter of the wire would decrease the resistance.  Increasing the diameter of the wire by 10% would increase the area by 21% and reduce the resistance similarly.  Again, I have not seen any claims that using larger diameter wire or more wires in the cable strand will improve SQ.
 
So...if you spend $$$ on a cable are you hearing an improvement because "I just spent $$$, so the SQ has got to be better"?  I have a $30 Fiio cable for my SE535's.  I didn't hear any difference compared to the stock Shure cable.  Don't get me wrong, the Fiio is is a good quality cable, and I actually prefer it to the OTB Shure cable...it is a bit more comfortable around the ears, mabe a bit more flexible.  I have a spare cable and it didn't break the bank.
 
What am I missing here?  Is the resistance of the cable (ignoring the other components in the system...connectors, solder joints, etc.) the controlling property?

 
Sorry for picking up this old thread but this did interest me. I recently had to have my HE-400 cablepro freedom cable sent off to be re-terminated and noticed a massive difference going back to the stock cable, was so glad to get the cablepro back. This does help me understand what I am hearing tho, copper to silver cable, half distance and double area.... perhaps it is just as simple as that!

 

[Happy Camper]

We have a dilemma in science and hobbyist experience. Science says they can't measure any detectable differences within human hearing. The hobbyist says they can hear differences but are not credible to science acceptability. Both sides have points but it's just a rock throwing mess to come to a mutual solution. The desire is to minimize the imprint of a device (wire) on the signal. So nothing will make a signal any more than it is. But that's not what the claims say. They say more of the signal is being heard. So how do we put together a protocol that our Head Fi community can do at meets? We could put together a package of cables to send to meets and document results.

 

[hartono99]

It is very simple answer, if anyone can differentiate that a sewing needle is dropped from 1 meter or 1,1 meter to the floor, for sure this man can have benefit from expensive cable. Otherwise, it is only for prestige.  The capacitance, inductance and resistance of the cable, when it is not a damaged cable, will differ in a very small amount. FYI, the capacitance of 1 meter coax cable is 82 pf, the resistance  for some milliohms, when connected to a few tenth ohm of output amplifier, and few hundred ohm of next amplifier, nobody will hear the difference, absolutely.