OOOOOps, After checking last night I discovered that my cables are 12 ga, not 14.

I use a cable that has 3 wires solid core in 18 gauge. I use 2 for positive and 1 for negative. The soundstage is incredible. Hmmmm, I think that may have something to do with my speakers.

I use BetterCables for everyone of my cables!

I've used Home Depot/Rat Shack Cable for a loooong time prior to getting some BetterCables. It's been years since I was suckered into Monster Speaker cables.

I have yet to find speaker cable that makes a world of difference.

I am using SP-200 to drive may main and center channel. The SP-200 were a significant improvement over my aging Monster cables. I am in the process of auditioning Signal Cables Ultra Single Wire (http://www.signalcable.com). For surrounds I and using Cobalt In-wall cables.

Vik

I've always been of the opinion that being able to distinguish between cables (or electronics for that matter) is dependent upon the quality of the other components in the system. If you've got speakers and components of average performance, you may not be able to hear any difference between one set of speaker cables or another. In my experience, I have been able to tell differences in speaker cables and interconnects. Sometimes, differences are perceived as better, just because it's different. What matters most is what sounds right to you....if you can accomplish this with Home Depot speaker cables, save your money and buy some DVD/CD's!! If you try some more expensive/exotic cables and your listening experience improves, then it's money well spent. BTW, I use Outlaw Interconnects and Tara Labs Prism Bi-Wire speaker cables.

One of the problems with comparing the change of any part of a system to its previous state is this: our brains are not fixed-reference analytical devices. Our brains are somewhat ‘auto-correcting with drifting reference’ when it comes to sensory input. If I brought 101 audio enthusiasts to a listening room, ask them to listen carefully for a while, ask them to step out while I put in a different set of cables when actually I really leave everything unchanged, then brought the people back for a second listen, how many would say the ‘change’ made the sound better, worse or made no difference?

To really have a fair A-B (or A-B-C-etc.) comparison, one has to have an equivalent run and environment for each cable, be able to switch between cables rather quickly (about 1 second?) and have the listeners blind to which set of cables are being used at a given moment. Then one needs to run through a long pseudo-random, but carefully planned, series of selections between the cables being compared and see if a particular set is ranked consistently better or worse than another.

Then, as harp795 points out, you may not find out which cables give the most accurate transference of the signal, but what type of transference do most people prefer for a given setup/environment.

I tend to think that cables that cause the least modification of the signal are the best. If 3 of 5 compared styles that did that, then I would think that any comparison of the 3, with a large enough statistical sample, would show no preference between them. Interestingly enough, some very esoteric cable can be shown, via properly engineered testing, to alter the signal more so than simple, low-gauge, good quality copper cable.

In the February/March 2004 and April/May 2004 issues of the absolute sound, 16 kinds of speaker cable are compared with interesting results.

Isn't cheap and Monster (that overpriced and overhyped stuff) an oxymoron?...

-THTS

Man oh man...best answer of them all!...

-THTS

BB4TB:

Good point however, there are people who will dislike you for pointing out things like the proper A/B test procedure. I sure am not the one but there are number of people who will argue against you by questioning things like how well the equipments were set up or room acoustics and how good the speakers were and …etc. If they find out which speakers were used they’ll blame on that or try to find excuse to discredit the result by nitpicking on bunch of things. Basically there isn’t much anyone can do to people like that to change their mind which makes me want to ask this question. Is there a terminology to describe people like that? I mean in some sort of audio term.

Audio Snob might do it, but I am partial to the classics like Jackass. A Jackass is stubborn, close minded, opinionated, a follower, yeah Jackass works for me. How about Audio Jackass or an "AJA".