Grant: Discretion's often the better part of valor, and you're nothing if not valiant, but I'll bet you a Helix no one here owns a cord less than 3 ft. long unless they DIY'ed it -- probably for the reason you mention -- however the question here is about sound and longer cords, not what's the shortest cord that won't fail to make the connection. I'll agree it makes sense that if a particular cord doesn't do beneficial things for the sound at 3 ft., then going to 8 ft. probably won't be an improvement -- another "it should go without saying" point. |
Nobody here has posited a reasonable argument for why a shorter power cord would ever sound better (kinda like the phallic analogy, no?). Although I don't think "longer is better" can hold true without limit (ditto!), and obviously for the vast majority of systems we're only talking about a range of a several feet difference at most, still it only makes sense that if a power cord does anything good for the sound at all, then it needs some length to get that effect accomplished. Of the power cords I own, two varieties (from two different brands) are in more than one length (ranging from 1m to 2.5m), and although I haven't done rigorous audition tests comparing the sounds of the different lengths (instead just going with whatever length works best from a cable-routing standpoint), my general, informal impression is that the length-is-good argument actually does have some degree of sonic merit to it. If I decide to do further listening investigations, I'll report the results here... |
Since this thread is back to my attention today I'll make good on my threat from above, and report that after additional testing with 1.5m vs. 2.5m lengths of a power cord specifically claimed by its manufacturer to incorporate beneficial filtering -- intrinsically via its lengthwise construction, rather than by some sort of discrete attatched filter (the van den Hul Mainsstream, which BTW is not offered in lengths below 1.5m for this very reason) -- I am reconfirmed as siding with the longer-is-better hypothesis (or at least more pronounced in its effects, which in this case I find salutory). |
Tplavas: Please forgive me when I note that you seem like you're coming from about 6 different places at once with your arguments. I glean from your posts that you feel: A) measurements will show that shorter is better; B) we cannot measure the effects of power cords; C) listening will show there's an optimal length that may not be the shortest; D) if listening does show that this optimum length is not the shortest, then you've got the wrong cord; E) offering technical explanations for what we hear with power cords is merely theorizing to support experience; F) technical theories support how you think I ought to do power cord listening tests.
I agree with you on one thing, with apologies to Grant, which is that Caelin's article cops out in the end (athough I liked some of the points he made before then) by recommending that power cords not be shorter than 3 feet, the shortest cord anybody offers anyway. That's bold. (BTW, I use some Shunyata cords.)
To tell you the truth, until only about 2 months ago, I probably wouldn't even have repsonded to this thread, because it would've simply struck me as silly. Of the cords I owned in different lengths -- which were all 3-5 ft. -- I just assumed they either sounded the same or that shorter would be incrementally better, but basically I didn't think about it. Then I got an 8 1/2 ft. cord as a good deal on demo, thinking I would try it out and buy a shorter length if I liked it well enough. It was instantly the best sounding cord I owned, and I began to suspect that length had something to do with it. So I got another one in a 5 ft. length, and do plan to formally compare the two once I'm sure everything's broken in and I get the time. FYI, I will compare them in all system positions, because I need to know how they perform where they'll be used, no matter what the reasons for how they do. |
No problem, Grant (BTW, my name is Alex, I'm located in metro DC, and you and I have spoken by phone in the past, if that helps in any way). I appreciate your caveats about the time and place Caelin made his recommendation. But I can't fail to note that your spirited defense of what I thought was a pretty trivial comment is taking place here, today, among overwhelmingly power cord "believers", as Tplavas puts it (personally, I think we're considerably past the stage of "belief" or "non-belief" among people who've actually done the critical listening). In this context, in a discussion not without some real controversy concerning whether longer PC's actually do sound better than shorter ones, I don't think it's being too critical or unfair to state the obvious: That recommending a minimum length of 3 ft., when that's the shortest PC's come anyway, and cautioning about why 2 ft. is impractical when everybody knows this, simply isn't saying much of anything. But I apologize for seeming a bit cynical; of course I realize that Shunyata still needs to sell 3 ft. cords same as everybody else in the biz -- if you went too strongly the other way, I guess people would just accuse you of trying to get us to spend more on longer cords! I understand that you and Caelin fundamentally concur with the assertion at hand, and that you came on the thread to lend whatever credibility you could to that stance, so I hope we can just 'agree to agree', as it were, about the larger point here and move on. |
I dunno, Bojack could have meant that my little dialectic was hogwash rather than the topic of long power cords, guess I couldn't blame him if he did...
Grant: I have one 1m and a few 1.8m Sidewinders, and although the shorter cord hasn't sounded better to me, as I might have vaguely thought it somehow ought to, I've never done a rigorous comparison to try and find out (in part because recently I've only used the Sidewinders for my tube monoblocks, and figured both amps should get the same length cords). But I might extend the test to the Sidewinders just for yucks, depending on what I observe with my newer 1.5m vs. 2.5m cords. |
Tplavas: Without going into a detailed characterization of the sound of the Mainsstream (although actually, your adjectives, though not the entire story, do happen to apply very well in this case) -- and I hope without being too cute in answering the question -- the simplest and probably best way I can describe the difference I found attributable to length is that the longer version sounds the same as the shorter version only more so, if you take my meaning. With this particular cord, in these lengths and in my system, to me that's a good thing, but I can also imagine by extrapolation the possibility of going overboard (something that could be said about any filtering). However, without a 30ft. cord on hand to compare that's only a guess on my part, and perhaps as has been suggested things just keep getting better and better, or maybe we simply reach a point of diminishing returns without going over into detrimental effects. (Unlike Leonx, I didn't find any loss of real resolution with the longer cord, although the reduced brightness, which I assume could represent reduced modulated noise, might be mistaken for such.)
PS -- I regret to have to add that for anyone interested in trying this cord, be aware it's a model which has been widely counterfeited on the secondhand market, as I found out the hard way before getting enlightened. |
Tplavas wrote: "...if, as you stated, there was a reduced brightness in the longer Van Den Hul cord, how would one explain that same tendency in cords that feature no 'filtering' of any kind? The answer is in the inductance and capacitance factors that result from increased length.
"...A properly designed PC should be resistant to noise, but if the changes in sonics we're hearing are strictly from filtering out that noise, then where are the measurements to back up that idea?
"...IMO, RLC factors rule the roost when it comes to PC sonics." The RLC factors themselves constitute a filter. All cables have RLC factors of course (including all the miles of it leading to the house), so all cords must act as filters in some way, but not all cords intentionally strive to arrange the factors so that the cord constitutes an effective filter for significantly reducing noise from the AC powerline. But that filtration effect, if so designed, is what reduces the noise (other than induced noise which is reduced by the shielding). That these RLC factors, and hence the degree of filtering, and hence the degree of noise reduction, will all be greater the longer the cord, is exactly what vdH posits for their particular cord, and is why they won't sell a 1m version. I own another variety of cord, not purported to act as a powerline filter, that do not affect the sound in the way your adjectives suggest, but instead tends to make it brighter sounding, among other qualities. However, whether this cord becomes mellower in longer lengths is something I do not know -- maybe just the opposite happens. Bottom line -- although I find your contentions somewhat obvious while also a bit self-contradictory in some details -- I don't think we fundamentally disagree here: Whatever a given cord does, a longer one will probably do more of it, and this could be either a good or a bad thing. |
