Cables and Snake Oil

[dowie]

that just isnt true. Even well constructed cables can sound different with different amp and speaker combinations.

What evidence do you have to support this claim? What cables are you referring to? I’d not necessarily assume that all expensive cables are necessarily well made.

Length of the cable can have an effect and thickness of the cable etc.. but if you’re in a domestic setting just wiring up your speakers in the lounge then it’s total BS, ordinary copper cable is fine and spending more isn’t going to make any improvement.

I’m not even sure what you mean by cables can sound different with different amp and speaker combinations? If you’re changing the amp and speakers then the biggest difference is going to be the speakers and their positioning relative to the listener and the room.

 

[james.miller]

What evidence do you have to support this claim?

I posted it.

What cables are you referring to?

Speaker cables in this instance, since your last paragraph in your last post mentioned power cables and by doing so inferred that you weren't talking about power cables the part of your post that i originally quoted - I assumed you were talking about speaker cables, yes?

I’d not necessarily assume that all expensive cables are necessarily well made.

Absolutely and I said nothing about cost, I said 'well constructed'.

Length of the cable can have an effect and thickness of the cable etc.. but if you’re in a domestic setting just wiring up your speakers in the lounge then it’s total BS, ordinary copper cable is fine and spending more isn’t going to make any improvement.

Again, i didnt mention cost. I am purely talking about construction. Cheap cables can be well constructed too, you know. But the type of construction still matters and in some cases it makes a very clear and audible difference. Some, not all, but some nonetheless. So snake oil it most certainly isn't.

I’m not even sure what you mean by cables can sound different with different amp and speaker combinations? If you’re changing the amp and speakers then the biggest difference is going to be the speakers and their positioning relative to the listener and the room.

It's exactly what i said. Speakers that are more difficult to drive, that is those with sharp impedance drops / rises that will tax an amplifier more, require low inductance cables to make the most of them. A simple twin flex is not enough, no matter the thickness and it gets worse with length. This is not la la audiophile guff, it's physics. Like I said, it's all there in the link I quoted but you'll find other evidence to back that up on google as well.

Like i said in my first post:

There's no snake oil, cables do make a difference. But that depends on how thick they are, how long they are, what they are constructed from and what kind of signal you are sending through them. That's where it becomes a big ol' drum of snake oil.

 

[dowie]

Again, i didnt mention cost. I am purely talking about construction. Cheap cables can be well constructed too, you know. But the type of construction still matters and in some cases it makes a very clear and audible difference. Some, not all, but some nonetheless. So snake oil it most certainly isn't.

Yes I do know... that was the point I originally made! You don't need to spend money on fancy high end cables was the whole point, it's just pure BS.

Original quote you claimed wasn't true:

In reality it’s more like you could perhaps notice some really thin, low quality cables but realistically no one is going to tell a well made “high end” cable vs some decent but ordinary thick copper cable.

You claimed:

that just isnt true. Even well constructed cables can sound different with different amp and speaker combinations.

Which makes no sense - if you chance the amp and speaker combinations then the biggest change to the sound is likely going to be the speakers and the placement of them relative to the room and the listener.

Given we have some well constructed cable then... that's all you need. Expensive speaker cables are pure snake oil, you've provided nothing to demonstrate otherwise.

 

[james.miller]

Original quote you claimed wasn't true:

In reality it’s more like you could perhaps notice some really thin, low quality cables but realistically no one is going to tell a well made “high end” cable vs some decent but ordinary thick copper cable.

It's not true because twin flex alone isnt enough for all systems. Making it thicker doesnt fix that. Changing the construction of the cable does and if you dont know what I mean then you haven't read anything in the link i posted. Forget the price aspect, I haven't mentioned that once. This is about using the right cable for the job and "ordinary thick copper cable' isn't always it. Quite the opposite actually, low inductance cables often use multiple thinner cores woven or twisted together.

You claimed:

that just isnt true. Even well constructed cables can sound different with different amp and speaker combinations.

Which makes no sense - if you chance the amp and speaker combinations then the biggest change to the sound is likely going to be the speakers and the placement of them relative to the room and the listener.

Read the link and it will make sense

Given we have some well constructed cable then... that's all you need. Expensive speaker cables are pure snake oil, you've provided nothing to demonstrate otherwise.

There are plenty of sites out there that demonstrate the affect of inductance on difficult to drive speakers. Rod Elliot's article, the one I posted, Is just one of them. Instead of ignoring the article and claiming I've done nothing to prove what I'm saying, why don't you just read it properly and get back to me ?

 

[dowie]

It's not true because twin flex alone isnt enough for all systems. Making it thicker doesnt fix that. Changing the construction of the cable does and if you dont know what I mean then you haven't read anything in the link i posted.

Sorry but it's just waffle - there are a bunch of quotes, whats the original source for the claim? What was cable was actually tested? And against what others? There aren't any details it's just some random snippet. I'm open to there being some edge case, exception here.. I don't dispute that the length of a cable can have an effect re: inductance but if we're only talking a few meters in a domestic setting then generally this isn't anything to worry about.

See the below:

https://www.soundguys.com/cable-myths-reviving-the-coathanger-test-23553/

Turns out, the cables just do not make an audible difference. Where we found some issues that were potentially audible with the measured response of the speaker, there are none with the cable itself. With noise, impulse response, and practical listening the data all said the same thing: the speaker cable, TS cable, and coathanger cables performed so well as to not make an audible difference from the consumer models, good or bad. We used FLAC music files (24-bit, 96kHz) to put these cables to the test, and still: no change.



But maybe there’s something I missed, and maybe that something could be heard by people.



Subjective results


In order to determine if people could hear the difference between a coathanger and a cable, we posted a poll in an earlier version of this article. We asked readers to listen to ten audio samples—two head-to-head at a time—and rate which ones sounded better than others, or if they were the same. In every single one of the five comparisons, one sample was recorded over a coathanger cable, and the other was recorded with a high-end cable.



On SoundGuys, the “both sound the same” option won every single poll question handily. While we didn’t have a large sample size, it’s more than the 2008 study’s sample set, so I’m happy with this.

• 122 listeners chose “both sound equally as good” (41.7%)
• 96 listeners preferred the cable (32.4%)
• 86 listeners preferred the coathanger (29.5%)

Because no cable beat the null hypothesis that both cables sounded equally as good, we’re confident in asserting that there’s something to that idea.



Unfortunately for those looking for a definitive answer, on our sister site Android Authority: the experiment didn’t quite go as expected. The same exact poll was posted with the same exact samples, and things got a little wonky with a different audience. In the first question, the coathanger crushed both other options with 57.1% of the vote—throwing off our results big time. On the second comparison, the high-end cable very narrowly edged out the coathanger 39.8% to 36.8%. On the third, the coathanger won again, but by a margin of 35.4% to 35%; hardly convincing, and very close to a normal distribution (aka, how a random number generator might vote).

You can use a literal coat hanger and people can't tell the difference.

 

[james.miller]

Sorry but it's just waffle - there are a bunch of quotes, whats the original source for the claim? What was cable was actually tested? There aren't any details it's just some random snippet.

10amp rated twin flex, Dowie. It says right there in the article and I quoted it in my post. That would be your 'thick enough copper cable'. You're trying to disprove an article written on a site that'd dedicated to disproving audio myths. Why, exactly?

You can use a literal coat hanger and people can't tell the difference.

Yeah? what speakers did they use? what amp did they use? Oh, I can do that too! Except the Rod Elliot article states the speakers and the cables used, of course.

 

[dowie]

10amp rated twin flex, Dowie. It says right there in the article and I quoted it in my post. That would be your 'thick enough copper cable'. You're trying to disprove an article written on a site that'd dedicated to disproving audio myths. Why, exactly?

No, I'm asking what the original source for the claim was and stating that I'm open to there being exceptions or edge cases here.

Yeah? what speakers did they use? what amp did they use? Oh, I can do that too! Except the Rod Elliot article states the speakers and the cables used, of course.

It doesn't give any details of the testing nor does it provide a comparison re: some other cables that don't have the issue.

At best you've perhaps got an edge case but without further details...

So for the sake of argument lets assume the edge case is correct... so what? The point still applies in general.

 

[james.miller]

At best you've perhaps got an edge case but without further details...

Well, i accept that there arent many of us (myself included) running electrostats, but it certainly isn't an edge case at best. Again, right cable for the job. Cost should not be the driving factor.

So for the sake of argument lets assume the edge case is correct... so what? The point still applies in general.

It applies in general. so, not always then? So...not BS like you claimed? Glad we cleared that up then

Do try and read the articles on the website, Dowie. It's full of useful information and zero BS.

 

[Edinho]

CAT5e the best speaker wire on the planet.

 

[Tephnos]

The absolute state of placebo in this thread.

 

[Nemiyen]

And this is kind of why I posted my thread about USB cables to see what people's thoughts were!

My opinion is anything analogue then the cable can affect the performance. Rgb shielded scart cables of decent quality can visually change the quality of the picture and sound e.g. No checkerboarding or no humming or hissing on the sound.

So in theory the same applies to audio but only if it is in the range or detail that our ears can even perceive.

The coat hanger test is a good one but that all depends on the quality of the dac and the quality of the speakers etc being used. Cheap ones might mask the differences but if 90 percent of people use cheap ones anyway then the test is valid, for them at least.

Im of the opinion that for analogue connections the cabke matters but for digital connections, not so much. Providing the digital cable doesn't receive massive noise or interference etc which the dac or amp struggles with.

 

[Armageus]

My opinion is anything analogue then the cable can affect the performance. Rgb shielded scart cables of decent quality can visually change the quality of the picture and sound e.g. No checkerboarding or no humming or hissing on the sound.

But that's just a case of the cable being "good enough" (or not) to begin with. Beyond that there isn't a difference.

With speaker cables, analogue audio cables it's the same - too thin and it will cause distortion etc.

 

[Demon]

Speaker cables, as that post mentioned earlier have much more plausible technical reasons to make a difference. However, the technical aspects of why they make a difference means any difference in the audio will be measurable, not only that, but as the article mentioned or eluded, the speaker cable really needs to be designed bespoke in each situation to your amplifier, length of cable and speaker to truly have the least impact on the audio signal, so just buying £1000/m cable blindly may well lead to degraded performance. Ironically you would want to measure/understand your equipment then you'd probably save a fortune and just buy a normal priced cable with the best match of impedance/capacitance etc.

For low power interconnects and mains cables however that's usually harder to justify, unless you are talking about the wrong design of cable being used entirely, or such terribly designed audio equipment that it is sensitive to things it really shouldn't be.
And obviously (and I stand by this) anything altering the sound in anyway should be measurable.. Rather than try to measure qualities of the cable, just measure the end to end audio signal and show how it degrades with some cables and not with others..

I think people are right to use the word snake oil.. because anytime they can't demonstrate using controlled (and fair) tests, then it's probably best to assume snake oil..

Take Atlas cables, and read their technical library (not really extensive, it's only 1 white paper)
https://www.atlascables.com/design-technical-papers.html

In theory, the perfect cable would simply comprise a pair of pure conductors in free air, although in practice the conductors need to be covered by an insulating material to prevent the two wires from ‘shorting’ together and to protect against corrosion.
But our research revealed that this essential insulator effectively adds unwanted capacitance (read ‘resistance’) which slows down the speed (Velocity of Propagation) at which delicate audio signals pass through the cable. While the measured effect is very small, the audible benefits with ultra-low levels of capacitance are very apparent, as listening tests reveal.

1. Technically a perfect cable would be pure conductors in a vacuum, not air
2. The properties (including capacitance) of insulation is such a well known and obvious fundamental property of any cable design that I'm amazed they had to do their own research to have figured it out.

Then read their white paper on their HighV Design Philosophy.
1. It says you need a 1Ghz oscilloscope that is rarely found in any lab, which is nonsense.. we have 2 of them in a our small electronics lab, and you get scopes up to 110Ghz..
2. They spend time just pointing out TDR and impedance matching theory that you learn at University (I certainly did on my degree course)
There is nothing of actual substance except they say they just design low capacitance insulation.. No studies on the effect on the audio signal for each of their product lines (how this is going to be relevant to mains cables would be interesting to see how contrived a test they'd have to setup, but whatever..) And as the other article on speaker cables mentioned previously in the thread, some amplifiers may not react well to that.
The only glimmer of hope I found was the promotion of mains filtering.. some badly designed equipment doesn't have a decent enough AC/DC stage to reject all noise, however would I buy theirs? I don't know I suspect it's be way too expensive.

Lets not get started on USB cables.. I remember the days of HDMI when the only way the snake oil marketing would try to show a difference was sneakily relying on HDMI's data rate fall back mechanism that dropped the colour depth down when they used a poor cable that wasn't able to achieve the necessary bandwidth..

The real answer in most cases as mentioned in placebo, that's not being overly derogatory, we all suffer from it.. I have 5 headphones/iems and I switched between 2 or 3 of them regularly.. I have found
1. On some days I find the same headphones sound a bit meh.. maybe a few hours later they sound great again.. my own ears / brain have quite a pronounced effect on the audio presentation..
2. When switching between headphones I always have to adjust.. it can take 10-20 minutes, but initially they sound different, and my brain pretty much things different = worse until I adjust.

I am sure the power of suggestion is more than enough for most people to think it sound great..

To back it up, we have an audiophile who recables everything, has about 20 different interconnects and is a completely outspoken person on the subject, I swear he thinks he's super human with his hearing.. So when he bought some WH-1000XM3 headphones (at the same time I did), he go them and immediately burnt them in for 1 week, then proclaimed the difference was night and day.. I just used mine, they took about an hour or two of listening before I felt I'd adjusted and could hear the improvements over my previous XM2's). The fun started when he updated the firmware which he did on a Monday before starting work, he then put them on and thought they sounded absolutely dull and lifeless and terrible.. then searching around he found people complaining about the noise reduction being worse after the update and equated that to affected the SQ.. So much so he wanted to return them but was worried he'd get the new firmware rather than the old firmware so asked if I'd swap. I said if he could tell on a blind test I'd swap.. So we referred to teh headphones as A and B and I took them away, went to my office, swapped them over and came out with the other pair each time.. After the 5th swap he claimed one sounded awful, the other sounded much more dynamic and less bright.. I asked how big a difference and he stated much more than when he recabled his IEMs which he raves about..
The punchline was, I never swapped the headphones over, they where always his.. He's been a little more humble these days, and is slightly prepared to admit that the effect he has on the listening experience is possibly quite a lot to do with his brain..

 

[james.miller]

CAT5e the best speaker wire on the planet.

Ha! I dont know about best performing outright, i mean it has it's drawbacks. But costwise a decent cat5 cable is pretty damn good, if you dont mind spending the time to make them. I use some 12-parir woven cat5's on my desktop speakers. Absolute overkill but i had the cat5 to spare and an hour (which actually ended up more like three by the time i had finished) to kill so why not lol.

 

[dowie]

Well, i accept that there arent many of us (myself included) running electrostats, but it certainly isn't an edge case at best. Again, right cable for the job. Cost should not be the driving factor.

Cost should be a factor - why spend more when ordinary copper cable does just as good a job. The point is that expensive speaker cables are BS.

It applies in general. so, not always then? So...not BS like you claimed? Glad we cleared that up then

Do try and read the articles on the website, Dowie. It's full of useful information and zero BS.

I’ve not really been shown anything to suggest it isn’t BS. I said assuming for the sake of argument it is true then you may have an edge case but you can’t provide anything other than an anecdote from some article from 1999.

For most of what I’ve seen then for a few meters of cable in your lounge this issue is completely irrelevant.

I don’t know why you want to nit pick by trying to show some edge case here but if you’ve got any further details re: testing etc.. of this issue to the point where it is noticeable (perhaps some double blind tests too) then please do post them.

 

[james.miller]

Cost should be a factor- why spend more when ordinary copper cable does just as good a job. The point is that expensive speaker cables are BS.

Dowie, your point was that thick enough copper was 'enough'. Now you're backpeddling. Construction techniques matter. Cost shouldn't. That doesn't mean spend more to get a better cable, it means picking the right cable to begin with. Demon and everybody else gets it:

as the article mentioned or eluded, the speaker cable really needs to be designed bespoke in each situation to your amplifier, length of cable and speaker to truly have the least impact on the audio signal, so just buying £1000/m cable blindly may well lead to degraded performance.

Why can't you?

I’ve not really been shown anything to suggest it isn’t BS. I said assuming for the sake of argument it is true then you may have an edge case but you can’t provide anything other than an anecdote from some article from 1999.

What else do you need, a chart? what?

For most of what I’ve seen then for a few meters of cable in your lounge this issue is completely irrelevant.

Not if your using a difficult to drive pair of speakers and no, that doesnt just apply to electrostats. Some passive crossover designs can present difficult loads to an amp, cable inductance again becomes more important in these cases.

I don’t know why you want to nit pick by trying to show some edge case here but if you’ve got any further details re: testing etc.. of this issue to the point where it is noticeable (perhaps some double blind tests too) then please do post them.

It's not me nit picking, i'm stating a fact. It's very much you trying to nit pick, dowie. I just showed you i can do the same when you post articles missing KEY information (which is not what i've done here).

 

[Nemiyen]

..

The real answer in most cases as mentioned in placebo, that's not being overly derogatory, we all suffer from it.. I have 5 headphones/iems and I switched between 2 or 3 of them regularly.. I have found
1. On some days I find the same headphones sound a bit meh.. maybe a few hours later they sound great again.. my own ears / brain have quite a pronounced effect on the audio presentation..
2. When switching between headphones I always have to adjust.. it can take 10-20 minutes, but initially they sound different, and my brain pretty much things different = worse until I adjust.

I am sure the power of suggestion is more than enough for most people to think it sound great..

This, this and more this.

I 100 percent believe most of the differences are in our heads. I've just upgraded my headphones and amp and to start with I thought I preferred the sound of my old setup. Used my new ones for a while now and have grown to like them. Went back to my old setup to see a difference and I definitely preferred my new setup. But at first I didn't like it lol.

I think we are very adaptive creatures (we'll I know we are... Hence evolution!) but I think it goes well into everything we have in life too. Sound, vision or other aspects. I think we are hard wired to "make the most" out of things and can justify or adapt to our decisions quite easily.

 

[dowie]

No, your point was that thick enough copper was 'enough'. Now you're backpeddling.

No I'm not, this is the statement you took issue with and it is referring to "high end" cables vs thick copper cable, I've not backtracked from that (nor has anyone provided anything to counter it) why pretend otherwise?

It’s the latter in most cases AFAIK... this stuff gets muddled by golden ears types spouting BS based on theoretical difference that can’t be perceived or just plain BS. The diminishing returns idea is what they’d love to be the truth... that yes it’s a minor difference but they’re so sophisticated etc.. they can spot it ergo must by into lots of extra woo...

In reality it’s more like you could perhaps notice some really thin, low quality cables but realistically no one is going to tell a well made “high end” cable vs some decent but ordinary thick copper cable.

As for the special power leads... just LOL.

Construction techniques matter. Cost shouldn't. That doesn't mean spend more to get a better cable, it means picking the right cable to begin with.

Of course cost matters here, the OP was about wasting money on power cables that don't add anything and someone else brought in speaker cables. My assertion was that high end cables are snake oil and some good copper cable is all that's needed... you claimed that wasn't true but you've not demonstrated that it is wrong, instead you've decided to try and demonstrate some edge case to suggest ordinary thick copper cable isn't good enough based on a snippet from some article and with no comparison of any alternatives or indeed any real world testing on whether these diferences are percieved.

That's your opinion then. Argue the toss with an article that's written to dispel audio myths if you like.

Not if your using a difficult to drive pair of speakers and no, that doesnt just apply to electrostats.

It's not me nit picking, i'm stating a fact.

Note again that in my posts I've not disputed that there are theoretical differences.

Resistance is the biggest potential issue for speaker cables AFAIK whereas capacitance and inductance are pretty minor. For some reason you want to nit pick the idea that thick copper cables are perfectly fine by highlighting that there may be an inductance issue that could be noticeable in the high frequencies with a specific speaker when using 5 meters of 1mm copper cable...

Do you have any details of testing that actually demonstrates this beyond the snippet of a claim in that article? Any double blind tests that show this is a noticeable difference? I mean theoretically a 2db difference is something people could start to notice.

For years there was a million dollar prize on offer via James Randi... yet apparently all that would have been needed to beat it would have been to make the trade off of with capacitance and inductance of a cable (which some high end cables already do) and just notice the differences in the treble of whatever tracks were used for the listening tests.... It strikes me as a bit odd that if this difference is something noticeable then no one claimed James Randi's million dollar prize.

 

[james.miller]

No I'm not, this is the statement you took issue with and it is referring to "high end" cables vs thick copper cable, I've not backtracked from that (nor has anyone provided anything to counter it) why pretend otherwise?

The statement i took issue with was you saying thick copper cable is enough. that does not always apply. And you absolutely are backpeddling.

Of course cost matters here, the OP was about wasting money on power cables that don't add anything and someone else brought in speaker cables. My assertion was that high end cables are snake oil and some good copper cable is all that's needed... you claimed that wasn't true but you've not demonstrated that it is wrong, instead you've decided to try and demonstrate some edge case to suggest ordinary thick copper cable isn't good enough based on a snippet from some article and with no comparison of any alternatives or indeed any real world testing on whether these diferences are percieved.

This is really tiresome. I'll quote myself again for you:

There's no snake oil, cables do make a difference. But that depends on how thick they are, how long they are, what they are constructed from and what kind of signal you are sending through them. That's where it becomes a big ol' drum of snake oil.

Note again that in my posts I've not disputed that there are theoretical differences.

I dont care about theoretical differences.

Resistance is the biggest potential issue for speaker cables AFAIK whereas capacitance and inductance are pretty minor. For some reason you want to nit pick the idea that thick copper cables are perfectly fine by highlighting that there may be an inductance issue that could be noticeable in the high frequencies with a specific speaker when using 5 meters of 1mm copper cable...

For crying out loud: It isn't nit picking to point out that a blanket statement doesnt always apply and backing that up with a real world account. This isnt some 'oh it sounded fuller and more 3d', it was measurements taken. Provable, demonstrable and audiable. end of. You want to disprove it? Go ahead, i'll be waiting for the results. You'd rather dismiss it entirely? I'm not interested then.

Do you have any details of testing that actually demonstrates this beyond the snippet of a claim in that article? Any double blind tests that show this is a noticeable difference? I mean theoretically a 2db difference is something people could start to notice.

For years there was a million dollar prize on offer via James Randi... yet apparently all that would have been needed to beat it would have been to make the trade off of with capacitance and inductance of a cable (which some high end cables already do) and just notice the differences in the treble of whatever tracks were used for the listening tests.... It strikes me as a bit odd that if this difference is something noticeable then no one claimed James Randi's million dollar prize.

That $1m dollar reward was made available to anybody who could prove a very specific pair of pear andjou cables were better than any normal monster cable. So no, introducing a completely different cable wouldnt meet the requirements of the reward, would it?

sigh.

 

[dowie]

The statement i took issue with was you saying thick copper cable is enough. that does not always apply. And you absolutely are backpeddling.

How am I backpedaling if I'm standing by my original quote?

For crying out loud: It isn't nit picking to point out that a blanket statement doesnt always apply and backing that up with a real world account. This isnt some 'oh it sounded fuller and more 3d', it was measurements taken. Provable, demonstrable and audiable. end of. You want to disprove it? Go ahead, i'll be waiting for the results. You'd rather dismiss it entirely? I'm not interested then.

Proven where? You made the claim not me. Where has this audible difference been demonstrated in blind testing?

Again I'm not disputing that there are theoretical differences here with some specific edge cases - dodgy audiophile amps, specific speakers.. I'm open to that but all you've provided so far is some brief snippet of a claim.

It seems like nit picking some edge case at best - it's not really disputing the general case that all you need is some good thick copper cable even if we assume for the sake of argument that this is a significant, noticeable issue (I'm rather skeptical of that tbh...).

That $1m dollar reward was made available to anybody who could prove a very specific pair of pear andjou cables were better than any normal monster cable. So no, introducing a completely different cable wouldnt meet the requirements of the reward, would it?

Sign.. the point you keep nit picking over is this inductance issue - one of the claims behind those cables was that these cables deal with that:

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue32/anjou.htm
"The Anjou Speaker Cable electrical properties begin with ultra low inductance. At just 0.025 mH/ft, the high current signals flowing through these cables will lose a minimal amount of energy. The capacitance of the Anjou Speaker Cable measures just 114 pF/ft, thus minimizing dielectric absorption. This is one of the lowest, if not the lowest capacitance speaker cable able to achieve such low inductance. Cables that achieve lower capacitance cannot match the low inductance of the Anjou Speaker Cable. The ultra low reactance allows for extremely accurate energy transfer."

Note though that the 1 million dollar challenge was open to all sorts of "woo" claims, there was press coverage about an RJ45 cable too. If inductance is such a significant/noticeable issue with speaker cables then it could have been a nice angle to take 1 million off Randi...

As I already said AFAIK inductance and capacitance are generally pretty negligible issues overhyped by audiophiles, resistance has more potential impact (AFAIK). Only use what you need from some good, thick copper cable and you're sorted tbh..

This seems like a good summary tbh...
https://www.audioholics.com/audio-video-cables/pear-cable-science

If one owns an amplifier that gets squirrelly with certain cables or is even bothered by cables at all, it is best to consider a better, not necessarily more expensive, amplifier that is not so touchy because using cables in this way does not solve the fundamental problem that still exists with the amplifier. It is this engineer’s opinion that any properly designed amplifier, one with low output impedance, proper usage of negative feedback, and a good power supply, is the best way to solve cable problems, and it would seem to be the solution favored by the authors as well.

[...]
Because of the massive number of possible permutations in available amplifier/loudspeaker combinations, it is essentially a random phenomenon. This means that there is no single cable design that could work with every possible combination to minimize deleterious effects to sound quality through complimentary properties. It far more likely that a particular cable design will not have any effect on audio quality at all and, although a remote possibility either way, at least as likely that the cable properties are not complimentary to a particular system as it is likely that they are complimentary. This is most certainly not what high priced cable manufacturers are claiming when they try to sell their wares.

This leads back to the Audioholics stance that any properly designed cable is as good as any other. The basis of the statement is supported in probability.

You've repeatedly quoted me to essentially nit pick/argue some edge case relating to a specific speaker and some claimed issue with inductance.

I'm open to the possibility of some edge cases etc.. and I'm not disputing theoretical differences here... but back in reality - the above seems like a good summary - "any properly designed cable is as good as any other".