One thing that I am absolutely sure of is there are no absolutes in audio. Overtime I try to find an application that is universal I come up with 1 or 9 reasons that it isn't.
The bottom line (HA!) is that what works, works. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason of it to do so. This just tells us that all of those things we learned in school may not necessarily be applicable to what we are doing. We tend to view everything simplistically.
Let's just take one example: Power cables
I do not pretend to understand everything that I think I know about electricity. I know what they taught me in school. Ohm's law ruled everything when I was a youngster. PIE, baby
I=V/R . Unfortunately, that is just the beginning of the topic. It is a topic to which I have found no end.
I remember some years ago when I was debating the topic of power cables on a well respected DIY forum. I remember being belittled for A: even thinking that a power cable could possibly make an audible change in SQ (sound quality). After all, convention wisdom (which I generally find to be neither) dictated that if you had enough power that was ALL you need -B; the diameter of my cables. I could not make ANYONE there understand the concepts of: conductor purity, geometry, inductance, capacitance, dielectric absorption, dissipation factor, insulator Q, termination quality, transmission line theory, connectors and on and on and on and on and..........
In the words of a now passed theoretical physicist friend of mine that was a mentor (and a "gasp" Christian) that made me think of reasons, purposes and solutions to problems: "we don't REALLY, on a quantum level understand how all of this (the universe) works". we have to understand what we do not understand. That is wisdom and the quest of thinking people.
The beauty of forums like this is that we can share and do joint research on stuff that DOES NOT WORK. This kind of thing saves money and more importantly time. I will be 68 on the 25th and I want to keep learning, sharing and developing products that meet the needs of most people. I don't purport to be so arrogant as to say that I have the SUPER DUPER DOO-DAH that meets everyones need.
Damn, wish I did.
Rock on, guys what works, works. Keep on chooglin'...
D