On the What Hi-Fi? site – a well known UK audio equipment review site – journalist Andy Madden wrote today an interesting defense of expensive audio cables. But he essentially states that he believes in magic, and doesn’t care about any kind of realist analysis of the issue:
You can put whatever research you want in front of me, all the measurements in the world aren’t going to stop me from having the opinion that all digital cables do not sound the same. There, I said it.
This is a serious problem in audiophile journalism. People get so convinced that their beliefs are true, that they refuse to accept any possibility that they are wrong. Frankly, this is irresponsible for a journalist to approach any type of item or content that is reviewed with this sort of pre-conception.
This journalist believes in magic. Note that he expressly talks about digital cables. While there is a possibility that there can be tiny differences in analog cables, this is simply not possible with digital cables, whether they are USB, HDMI or Ethernet.
What Hi-Fi? has lost all credibility. This said, at least they actually published this article; many other sites and magazines have journalists whose attitudes are similar, but who are ashamed to admit it.
Also, read Do Cables Make a Difference to Audio Playback? where the editor of What Hi-Fi? responds to my comments, and I show that even the top recording engineers don’t use fancy cables. And Music, not Sound: Why High-Resolution Music is a Marketing Ploy. And read about how What Hi-Fi? reviews cables; see how, in one case, they just posted the same review text for two different cables.