Does Audio Cable Affect Sound? I Built a Physics Simulator to Find Out.

Discussing whether audio cables change the sound often turns into a never-ending debate based on subjective impressions. "Long RCA cables make the sound feel muddy." "Silver wires add a glossy texture to the highs." "Extremely long speaker cables lose their punch." These anecdotes have existed for decades, but personal experiences alone don't reach a conclusion. Conversely, simple IDEAL circuit models often fail to explain what audiophiles actually hear. That's why I decided to stop looking at the cable in isolation. Instead, I built a simulator that treats the entire signal path as a single physical system: Physical characteristics of the cable Interaction with connected equipment Amplifier behavior Response degradation in the time domain Analytical metrics closer to human perception The Project GitHub: https://github.com/moe-charm/audio-chain-physics Live Demo: https://audio-chain-physics.streamlit.app/ Zenodo DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18898657 What I Built Audio Chain Phys