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As to the initial statement, people think a cable is a cable and that there are no differences in performance. Do they also consider a baseline headphone to be the same as the flagship model using the same driver? Is the basic vinyl needle the same as the flagship model, they are both needles after all. The same analogy people use for cables you wouldn't need to spend any more than a basic headphone or a basic needle to get the same performance as the flagship models.
The statement about a digital cable making an analog adjustment to the sound is rubbish. The signal in the digital realm hasn't been converted yet so I don't see how a digital cable can influence what you hear in your headphones. It can't improve bass extension or unveil the highs.
So basically you're saying that if there's a difference in headphones or vinyl needles, there must be a difference in digital cables too? That makes absolutely no sense. Just being different or having a different price means nothing inherently unless you understand in what way it's different, or analyze the overall perception with ABX testing. I'm an advocate of actually understanding the technology, but the reality is not many people here will I suppose. I did try to explain my best though
so if you actually aren't lazy and are willing to read my posts a few pages back I explain exactly why it's NOT like differing quality headphones, etc.
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Good one. I don't think anyone who's been in a physics class argues burn-in occurs. Although people like to argue in terms of "burn-in happens or not", that's an oversimplification.
That's a good way of explaining it, and this actually applies to analog cables as well. Any physicist or electrical engineer will tell you that different metals and cable configurations etc. will result in a different effective capacitance and inductance that results from the wire (at least from a very simplified model of how it works). What this means in theory is it does modify the frequency spectrum somewhat (everything has limited bandwidth; nothing is perfect in the analog world), but the question is whether this is even remotely within human hearing range to even begin to matter.
As I understand it (and analogue design isn't my specialty), headphone cables should be providing much more than 22khz bandwidth -- I'd suspect gigahertz or more would be more common on a high quality wire (it's not like these wires are miles long) - literally millions of times more than you need. For perspective, even assuming your headphones can respond to 50khz (even though your ears can't), I doubt there's any wire that doesn't easily exceed that anyway.
Let me just make this clear. Saying that some cable cuts off frequencies at frequency X gigahertz does NOT in any way impact the frequencies below like 22 khz. To say otherwise is like saying "WHAT? The speed limit here is 100,000,000,000 miles per hour? This is unfair! Now I can't drive at 55 MPH properly. Don't give me your 'scientific mumbo jumbo' about it not effecting my speed,
it's a speed limit therefore it must limit my speed, right! I don't care what science says, I'm gonna find a road with a higher speed limit so I can PROPERLY enjoy driving at 55 MPH." Do you see how silly that sounds?
If I was an audiophile scammer/snakeoil company though, I'd do it
right: I'd build a cable that contains a tiny little capacitor which would absolutely and measurably change the frequency spectrum. Basically I'd make it act as an analogue equalizer, reducing treble or whatever. Then just make up a big technobabble spiel about scalar waves and the crystal harmonics that induce magic fairy love bubbles into the audio bit stream or something, paint it a unique color, and sell it for $100,000 a piece.
