It's also pretty curious that audio reproduction seems to be the only branch of technology where these critical aspects of signal transmission have been implemented.
CERN ... LIGO ... VLT … ITER …
And yet, everyone forgets 40-pin vs. 80-pin IDE connectors, Cat8 vs Cat3 cable, or even the challenges with old school trace length matching
So all the hand waving audiophile cable theory actually DOES matter.
But, when it matters for PCI express, it doesn’t matter for audio, at least when it comes to practical benefit.
Everyone talks level matching, but when you actually do it, it’s impossible to level match. L-C-R can impart frequency response, amplitude and phase changes which may not respond to a simple volume up or down. I used the example of resistance, if the lower resistance cable at max volume delivers you louder dB than the max volume of the other cable, and you are playing at max blast, the better cable can win in blind testing because it’s louder, and if you can only correct by 0.5 dB with your volume control, then the better cable will always be better when you match volumes as close as possible.
If you digitally attenuate the lower resistance cable, then the two sound the same. Cables don’t make a difference. But all you did was take the better, lower resistance cable and then take away the premium conductivity through post processing.
You may not need the lower resistance but it is better.
If you had EQUAL PRICING and it was $10 for the normal and $10 for the better cable, we would all unanimously recommend the better cable.
If you were Elon Musk and there was a $3000 cable that was 0.1 dB better than the $10 cable, then maybe it’s fine for him to do that. It’s wealth re-distribution done with intent as opposed to being forced onto someone.
Where you DON’T want to be is spending $3000 on a cable that has HIGHER resistance or higher capacitance so that it is less transparent…. OR at the very least c it would be very inefficient.
Last, unless Elon Musk is hiding amongst us since he does have a fancy Sonus Faber setup, so he’s not a Bose/Sonos/Bang and Olufsen type of guy, for most of us, even those who have saved/allocates more of their budget to audio, spending money on nice cables comes at a compromise of something else, which is where it is useful to recommend against investing in fancy cables.
I disagree with
@genesisaudiorack that criticisms only come from people who haven’t experienced very expensive products on very revealing systems, but I also disagree with
@Wolf11Man that there is some ulterior motive. It’s an Internet forum. Men like to argue that they are right all the time and audiophile hobby is disproportionately men
I also disagree with
@Killingbeans that high performance scientific computing ignores cables. It’s OK for cables to matter in areas like HPC and OK for cables to be one of the audio products where the point of diminishing returns occurs as soon as you have electrical conductivity of any sort!