Was surprised to read that there are ‚audiophile SATA cables‘ on the market at prices as High as 400USD (anymore). Honestly, does this make a difference? Peter Pang Audio, JCAT, Pachanko and others are offering them. Does anyone out there have some experiences? Thx, wish you a great Sunday!
I am not surprised at all. People try to make money anyway possible. There is no such thing as audiophile digital cables of any type. If a cable is good for general computing, it’s good for audio. There’s nothing special about audio data.
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I’m surprised that you are surprised. Manufacturers of audio related snake-oil products will of course seek to expand their product range with reassuringly expensive but utterly pointless products. They are selling to the converted after all, so it is an easy up-sell.
If your SATA interface has data transfer integrity issues, a change of SATA cable won’t fix it.
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Yes, they exist. The brands you mention major in taking PC components and offering as audiophile ready (at an appropriate premium). There is always a sector of any market where this sort of product is marketed to appeal to enthusiasts. Audio, cars, cycling, watches. They all have similar marketing philosophies.
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Thx for your comments. I really appreciate your advice. But to go back to the comparisons to luxury goods: I would accept a certain budget to further improve the sound experience. However, do these ‚audiophile SATA cables‘ really change the experiences? Or is it a matter of psycho-acoustics? Thx!
What exactly do they claim to do? Do they provide any objective evidence or measurements to demonstrate that they do what they say they do?
No measurements… subjective opinion: better sound quality… therefore I am asking! Thx!
There is always a more apropiate package of adjectives to describe this particular demographic… (I don’t try or want to be polite).
They change the experience, yes. You experience the whole system in a very different way knowing that you just replaced an $1 cable (perfectly capable of the task was designed for) with a $400 one…
They don’t change the sound. Period.
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If these cables were so good, don’t you think that major corporations would use them to keep their mission critical systems up and running?
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I still have some audiophile text markers in various colors that were designed to reduce the optical reflections from the outer edge of a CD, just apply a color that matches the music style and and enjoy a reflection free music experience. While I am at I have these round stickers 1-2 cm in diameter in various Neon colors to apply the the front of the speakers, well they are 30 + years old but the still do their magic by focusing the sound towards the listeners.
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Well, if you believe that ethernet cables, usb cables, network switches …etc make a difference, then yes, you must believe SATA cables will make a difference. You’ll also have to invest in an audiophile motherboard, audiophile hard drive, audiophile mouse and keyboard which could otherwise introduce noise into the system… I mean the fun of buying audiophile gear is almost endless. 
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They don’t care. And that isn’t being flippant. They expect to be liked, loathed or ignored. So long as enough like what they do, they don’t care about the rest.
There are usually a certain percentage of reports these cables don’t work. Usually because to make a difference they have to step outside of the normal specifications of regular cables. I suspect they work by limiting data rates amongst other things. The most I would do personally is keep cable lengths short. I do own products by Jcat and Pink Faun (both presently unused) but never considered stretching that to cables. I’ve ended up with a silent NUC with linear PSU serving IP. Isolation worked for me into a commercial streaming DAC.
And you’ll also need your own electricity delivery system outside your home. 
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Do not forget audiophile diet. Very underappreciated but critical factor if you want realize a full potential of your $140,000 setup. Oh almost forgot audiophile toilet paper.
Imagine ordering something from Amazon. There are a few possible scenarios for how this could pan out, but the most likely is that it will arrive on time and undamaged. Now, imagine that there are two ways this could occur: first, it arrives in an Amazon van (a standard van, maybe a few years old, but perfectly reliable). Second, for an additional payment of $400, you can have your package delivered by a chauffeur driven Bugatti.
If you’re the sort of person who would go for the ‘enhanced delivery’ Bugatti option, buy an audiophile SATA cable.
A SATA cable, like any other cable in the digital domain, performs the task of getting data from A to B, and providing the cable is in-spec and not damaged, it will do the job it was designed to do. There’s no qualitative scale here - either the data is delivered, or it isn’t, i.e. there’s no such thing as better data, or date that will ‘remove a veil, deepen the blacks, and so on’. All that needs to happen is for the data to be sent and for the data to arrive.
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Really, only a sata cable? What about the powercord to the pc or the power supply of the pc?
The data from the hard drive goes to the motherboard and gets processed further on its way to perhaps an ethernet port, but before it reaches that ethernet port all that data gets chopped up in the tcp stack, and that expensive sata cable is going to make a difference? Oh please, I hope we will see some convincing reports about that sata cable…sorry for being sarcastic…
No problem 
They will go something like “Trust your ears, it’s like night and day”.
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Please go into a high-end audio store, let the sales people give you a demo of the same (high quality) server fed by two different (high quality) power cords of different design, and it will take 20 seconds for you to hear what others know. Sarcasm seems a normal reaction when people have no experience in an area but also want to believe they are being scientific. There are obviously engineering reasons behind the differences but getting anyone to study them systematically and publish seems to be a big ask.
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It’s a shame that none of the electrical engineers (or experts in related fields) seem to have the time to study this either. I wonder why that is? 
@Graeme_Finlayson, just wanted to flag you in case you missed this gem of a thread 
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