Is it all in my head??

waltertexas

If you like the Kimber cable sound and improvement then 
maybe you should stay with using Kimber cables and move up to a higher grade that they make .
Synergy can be an elusive find , so changing cable manufactures could prove positive or negative sonic effects .

nonoise makes a good point , you've started now go from there .

Far more likely that you are hearing a difference than it all being a figment of your imagination. 

@nonoise,

"Your hearing is completely different from someone else.
You’ll have some overlap but your hearing is unique.
Your amp won’t have the same output specs as others.
Your speaker won’t have the same input specs as others."

Not sure I get that part... That's what the skeptics say to us about fuses, wiring and everything else controversial...that we lack either the educated ear or the technical skill to interpret the results of our own observations, and that therefore we shouldn't even attempt to find out on our own what might be going on. But, for the life of me, I don't get why we wouldn't do so, if we have an opportunity in front of us. Why would audiophiles trust their ears with speakers, with amps and sources...but Not with wiring? Makes no sense to me... I for one am not looking solve the 'mystery of all wiring', just to see if I can unearth the kind of things the makers are not telling me. Your post above makes it look like all investigation on the topic should be banned or dropped. Oh sure, some folks might be in need of starting over from the beginning when it comes to dreaming up an experiment that is dirt simple enough to be factually useful, yeah, I'll grant you that might be a fair criticism, but I mean should we deny other peoples right to experiment...or just maybe be willing to call into question the results on occasion. Just sayin', is all.

Regards

Nonoise and ozzy both just hit the nail in the coffin! 

I am so old that I remember the time when the AC power cord was used as the antenna for many receivers.

Shielding, wire geometry, wire quality, and wire gauge will all affect the sound quality of the power cord. That being said, an expensive power cord won’t polish a turd, so you have to be aware of that limitation.

Some power cords will really make a component sing and you will be shaking your head in bewilderment.

ozzy

There are no shortcuts.
You won’t find a formula.
You have to try it out for yourself.
You simply need to start with something and go from there.
Your hearing is completely different from someone else.
You’ll have some overlap but your hearing is unique.
Your amp won’t have the same output specs as others.
Your speaker won’t have the same input specs as others.
If all amps and speakers had the same specs, then one cable would have been settled on ages ago.
Good luck.

All the best,
Nonoise

I follow a simple formula for happiness with this hobby. Buy the most expensive equipment you can afford. If it sounds better than your old equipment keep it. If it doesn’t, return it.

All of reality is in your head, so, yes, it's in your head.

Back in the mid 1990s I was seeing this young gal and she gave me the old "it's not you it's me" line.  I begged for another shot, she reluctantly agreed but once she scoped out the Monster Cables I was using she was hooked.  I guess cables are like fancy wheels on a mediocre car, it brings it up a notch. I don't know if cables make a difference but I'm not taking any chances!

It's very simple.  Just try a set of AQ Storm PC's.   If you don't hear a very clear SQ improvement, write back and tell us about it.

From my own experience, SQ Storm cables (Tornado, Hurricane) have made the most day/night improvement compared with other equipment upgrades, such as amps, days.  

Obviously I want to hear improvements with all audio investments and so I'm probably biased every time I buy something, it's just that the AQ Storm Series power cables have made the clearest difference. Other pieces of equipment, I've been happy to send back.

I don't care what anyone's profession is, doesn't mean crapola!
Just because one can't hear a difference with power cords or any type of interconnect, doesn't mean there isn't a sonic difference with the music one hears.
It could mean they have not perfected how to listen to music and hear differences, they could be tone-deaf and not realize it, or be using equipment not capible of good sonics.

Kimber braided cables presumably reduce external noise, you know, from an engineering perspective. So where’s the beef? 🐂

Nobody really knows why or how these things work. If anyone ever did then in no time flat everyone else would too and the resulting competition would drive prices to the floor. That hasn't happened. Because no one has a clue. Just stories they tell to customers who haven't yet figured out design don't mean squat. How it sounds is all that matters. So really, they don't design, they experiment. When you have to throw away a hundred that sound like crap to find one that sounds good then of course you have to charge a fortune for that one percenter. But then not all "designers" even get to the 1%. When you can't sell the sound, sell the story. Always some engineer or wannabe who can't hear (or won't trust his own ears- happens, trust me) eager to buy the story. This is power cords, interconnects, speaker cables (everything, really- turntables, speakers, cones, footers, equipment racks, on and on, the whole friggen industry) in a nutshell.

...not that AQ had any kind of lock on compromised wire designs.

@kumakahn, 

It seems to me, a few decades back, AudioQuest wrote a "manifesto" about what they considered to be worthwhile goals in wire design. I read it, and for the most part, it is about as good a reference as any manufacturer ever produced in layman's terms. The only problem with it was that, while the principles appeared to be rather valid, AQ itself hardly ever followed its own advice altogether in any single cable design of theirs that I ever saw...they were usually compromised, by their own definition, one way or another. 

@kumakahn: If you can record ~5000 samples of 10sec audio clips approx 50/50 split between cable A and cable B, then we can attempt to train a deep LSTM neural network to distinguish the two.   If the computer can learn a difference, then we can work on reverse engineering what it picked up on.

@kumakahn Exactly...unfortunately for us all, there Are no sources of sound, scientific information that relate to sound characteristics like the ones you mention. That sort of thing, AFAIK, is not to be found in science, per se, but only in marketing...hence we rank ametures are having to try to do it all ourselves, basically.

In the early 2000’s I got into it because of the raging debate at the time of which was better, stranded or solid core...I mean about half the manufacturers were saying that stranded was clearly the "greatest" and the other half said solid core - the only thing I knew for sure is that they couldn’t both be right. That’s when I started experimenting myself, however crudely, it didn’t matter to me, with some orphaned wires I had accumulated. The materials used have an impact. Online I looked at topics like dielectric absorption, which was helpful, but drew no correlation between that and sound quality, per se...only measurements, mostly. But, the experimenting taught me more about what relates to sound quality than anything else. It’s just that I had to carry out repeated experiments over time, a few years in fact for me, in order to be sure I was not inferring something that wasn’t there. Even so, I don’t have any scientific "proof" of what I hear, and yet it’s demonstrable all the same.

I have this theory on "cooking" cables too... I think what is happening might be a combination of oxidation and 'listening experience'.  I have a pair of speaker cables I made that are braided/twisted and when terminated are 9AWG equivalent.  I did an internal bi-wire pair so 6AWG essentially.  When I hooked them up, I was shocked at how bad they sounded compared to the non bi-wire cables i replaced (both made from the same 12-awg stock)... but after listening to them for a week, they started to sound better and more detailed (because 8 wires to each speaker are way better than 4 right?!).  Did they sound better? probably not and i kinda' think they still sound worse now that i think about it.  maybe that too is all in my head...

Personally, I would really appreciate someone pointing me to some sources of sound, scientific information about what factors make up a true, audiophile grade interconnect and which characteristics tend to enhance clarity, treble, bass speed, etc.  I cannot afford trying 20 different types. But, I can distinguish sound quality differences among the various types I already have.  I just don’t fully understand why those differences exist beyond guage and shielding quality.

This is, so far, the most reasonable and polite OP that I have seen on topic of cords/cables. Now, if the thread could remain that way...

Infinitely better than trying to cook them into compliance!

That is to say that, IME, most wires that have Very little or no insulation, do not seem to require any break in at all...with the possible exception of silver conductors, which I don't work with much anymore, since I've come to realize I generally prefer copper.

One thing I believe I do know by now, is that the insulation known as PVC is just plain terrible...I mean it’s hot stinking garbage...just no good way to apply it for sound quality’s sake. It’s that smooth, usually black or dark grey, rubbery material that you often see on lower-priced IC’s, sometimes on speaker cables or even pc’s. Almost all the IC’s that come inside the box with new gear have it. It’s smooth in texture, has a matte finish, and gives a little bit to the touch like neoprene, except PVC has much finer air cells within it.

PVC destroys air, openness and the sense of atmospheric space, not just through the mids and highs, but down into the lower mids and can even obscure some bass detail. It has that characteristic "dead", "lifeless" or "rubbery" sound to it that you usually associate with cheaper wires. The good news is that whenever you simply strip off this material down to whatever material is underneath, you breathe massive amounts of life back into the sound and the music. With XLR cables the underlying material will likely braid shielding, in which case you need to cut carefully without nicking up the braid too much. But, it’s amazing how much even cheapie wires will benefit from this! Which makes it easy to try out if you have a pair. But, I’ve tried it enough times now to know that whenever I buy any wires with this jacketing on it, I know definitely that it’s coming off as soon as I buy them.

my speaker cables vary wildly with geometry... i use the same 12-awg cable for all of them.. i've built about 4 pair so far for critical listening.  

I've built speaker cables and IC's, but have never attempted power cords.

An ee told me once (and I’m not nearly an ee) that sound was primarily determined by power-vs-length-vs-geometry. Other things like noise cancellation or group delay caused by insulation thickness and material also enter into it. The actual calculations for that sort of thing are often proprietary and not given up easily by those in the know. But, this tends to mean that different components that have different power draws tend to require different power-vs-length-vs-geometry solutions But, the rest of us have to struggle along when it comes to DIY...or copy what we see that works for a given app, or whatever.

5@ivan_nosnibor   I have no quantitative reason for what I hear and I only bought this cable because it looks cool and it would have cost me >50% of the price in parts to build it myself and i cant fabricate my own connectors.  Also, I build most of my own cables from the same wire and it seems like the way I twist, braid or wind it impacts the sound (not always for the better, which contradicts my oxidation theory)...

Welcome to audio! Where you generally first have to hear a given difference or effect for yourself...and then struggle to find the evidence or proof of its existence after the fact.

That’s because there is actually a lot about this hobby that technically seems to ’defy’ common sense. There’s at least one old hobby saying that seems to hold up that goes: "never judge an audio book by its cover"...which means just because an amp is ss, doesn’t mean it will always sound bad, or just because a pre-amp is passive, doesn’t mean it will always sound good, and so on.

People I think make the mistake of trying to grasp the hobby as a set of "rules" that must be learned. After a few decades at it, I no longer think that even applies. For most every rule someone comes up with, there may be anywhere from one to a dozen different exceptions to it...IME, they’re there, you may have to look for them a while to find them, but they’re there. I myself happen to think of this hobby as having far more exceptions than rules, no matter what others may say.

The only thing worse than hearing a difference and not being able to explain it is to insist that the difference cannot possibly exist because it just doesn’t make sense, without having heard it.

I am not surprised, roberjerman, a well known power cord troll ( he trolls on other things as well ), has shown up. Give this thread some time, and I assure you, others will follow, as he has plenty of company. To not trust your ears, is something I am always amused at. Why are folks in audio land spending money on better amplifiers, better speakers, room acoustics tweaks, etc., and so closed minded to other things audio. Why are so many of these trolls not willing to try some power cords ( they are inexpensive enough ). My guesses are, they know their hearing is bad ( from being in bands, etc. ); do not want to find out, or admit, their hearing is bad; their equipment is old and do not have iec inlets; to hear some of these changes and differences, they have an  " acute " shortage of experience in listening for fine details; the system they have does not have high enough definition or detail. Some of them, as above, have many systems set up throughout their home, and none of them are high definition. Who knows ? Trolling will never stop, because, and this was stated from another power cord thread, " it goes much deeper than the cords themselves ". Keep in mind, I not looking to gain any popularity contests with these trolls. I just call them as I see them. Enjoy ! MrD.

 I am retired electrical engineer.   I bye reasonably priced power cables.  I’d buy for geometry and shielding. Pangea  signature series works for me. 

Polishing the blades on PC's with Copper Brite was a tweak I read about years ago!

If PC's made a difference why are all the enthusiasts so unwilling to do this simple test? 

@roberjerman:  Exactly!!  I think I agree but i think there might be more variables at play... for example, I think the act of moving the equipment and ensuring everything is "connected" might in itself clean off enough oxidation that sounds seem "fresh"?  Actually that is a good way to describe it too...it sounds like someone changed the sheets. :P

Now if someone snuck in overnight and replaced that new PC with the cheap original one (and you didn't notice), it is most likely that you would not hear any difference from the day before!

Confirmation bias is a powerful mental force! Since you were subconsciously expecting a positive result, you indeed had a positive experience! 

Power cords do impact the sound.  I was skeptical at first too, but after hearing the difference, I know it's true.  You will get to hear more difference the more stock power cords you replace in your system.