Anyway,
@amirm I got lots of cables lying around, bought during the past 20 years of audio tinkering, and it is a fact that some do affect aspects of the reproduced sound in a somewhat consistent way, despite prices or brand
So let´s focus in one aspect and one instrument to make correlations easyer, piano notes decay.
It is very notable that some cables make you think the pianist are indeed using the brake pedal when others show it really isn´t.
I've been an audiophile since I was in college, so thankfully had opportunities to enjoy what my budget could afford when my hearing was still great.
#1. Sighted bias. This is different than imaginary perception. Something imaginary doesn't actually exist. Bias can alter our perceptions measurably. The best example of this are some of these fMRI studies on phantom acupuncture.
When the brain thinks something, it can actually alter and convince you of the change.
Although acupuncture is an effective therapeutic intervention for pain reduction, the exact difference between real and sham acupuncture has not been clearly understood because a somatosensory tactile component is commonly included in the existing sham acupuncture protocols. In an event-related...
www.nature.com
What this means is that your brain probably does hear better piano note decay, but it's because of the sighted bias. You can convince and train your brain to believe in the same thing for any product. This is what being a good listener is about and it's free. When the subjective listeners believe that some tweak is changing the sound, I genuinely believe that they hear and experience what they are writing. The problem is that most tweaks are sold at absurd markups and there may be more effective ways to convince yourself of what you presume to hear.
#2. Intentional, euphonic colorations. I don't think this is too hard to appreciate. Someone like
@amirm is a "trained listener" and is able to detect difference in frequency response and transparency. Harman used to have a Windows application that let you train yourself. He can hear differences between transparent and non-transparent audio and prefers transparent audio.
100% there is a concept of personal preference. That 17 year old kid with the car stereo and bass that's heard from blocks away and is nothing but distortion and rattle? You cannot talk that person out of believing that they are listening to poor quality audio, because for THEM, that experience of the shaking car gives him/her the audio pleasure that a more neutral experience doesn't happen.
For me, I like ultimate transparency for recorded instruments like classical music. On the other hand, I genuinely think that colorations can make some music sound better and can ABX the differences.
These are the cables with actual capacitors or inductors in them.
#3. Masking. A few posts up, I show that bad cables can introduce coloration, and in my specific case, a buzz. This buzz may not be equal across the spectrum. The same way you need to turn up the volume if you are watching TV and there is a vacuum going on, you can imagine that any type of added noise into a signal may preferentially mask specific portions of the content and then when "level matching" you preferentially enhance other portions of the content.