One Cord To Rule Them All

I signed up to respond to one thread, but I was amused enough by this thread and the very long copy and paste marketing speech by one of the cable companies. I am sure you feel very strongly about cables, Mr. thyname, but perhaps before cutting and pasting a long marketing blurb by a company whose bias can not be ruled out, you should ask yourself, am I qualified, to review this information, as posted, and be confident that it is correct, and does not present false of misleading information. I do not honestly think you can state that.

I have no doubt you were impressed by Caelin Gabriel wrote, however, I expect that electrical engineers and physicists, not to mention the odd audio component designer is shaking their head. To me, what he wrote, is predominantly word salad, often technically contradicts itself, and in many points is outright wrong. I find even its technical presentation of "electricity" points to perhaps a flawed understanding of power transfer and even circuits. Honestly, some of the things he wrote made me just shake my head, and not because I did not understand the topic, but I question whether Mr. Gabriel does.

After reading this article, I was curious about Mr. Gabriel's qualifications. I found what is written below, on 6moons, in his own words. Having interviewed hundreds of technical personal, I have my own take.  Equivalent to an EE degree is not an EE degree. I suspect he lacks some of the courses in fundamentals that make the difference between engineering and technician/designer.  The other thing I note is the lack of specifics. When I talk to accomplished technical staff, they don't make statements such as "I was involved with", they make clear statements about their roles and accomplishments in what they were involved with. It is how you tell the performers, from those that were just part of the team. 


You are of course free to keep believing in the gospel according to Gaelin, but I suggest being more selective of those you worship.

I was physical sciences major in college but couldn't quite finish my degree. Money issues. I then entered the military. They don't care about credentials at all. They just test you - thoroughly. They were duly impressed with my abilities and decided to send me to a secret Navy cadre. I obtained the equivalent of an electronics engineering degree and was assigned to a military division of the National Security Agency. The NSA is the governmental information-gathering agency, with the world's most elaborate high-speed computers and signal decoding equipment. We were involved with intense R&D of ultra-sensitive data acquisition systems. 

Subsequent to my military career, I became involved in the computer industry during the early Internet days under DARPA, working on network architecture. Later I became involved with the development of high-speed networking devices like the 1GB/s fibre-channel interface and the present 100MB/s and 1GB/s Ethernet devices. 

Mr. Thyname I have noticed following these forms for a while that when anyone challenges you you resort to childish insults and attacks on their character. Perhaps there is some trauma in your past or unhappiness with your present situation that causes you to do this. However it does not advance your position and I suggest a more mature approach.

With regards to my qualifications I am well qualified to make the comments that I did with respect to what was written. I would expect most electrical engineers and physics students to recognize some of the technical errors. I would not expected of people not skilled but that is why people who are make the comments that I did.

@lostinseattle,

I perceive some healthy skepticism percolating below the surface which is perhaps why you found the article by Caelin interesting, but perhaps some thing gave you pause, which they should.

The article was written in a vacuum, and was not accurate in many regards. Was this intentional? I don't know. He claims extensive experience so if we take him at this word he was not truthful. Perhaps the untruthful statement is his experience.

Linear power supplies do draw power in peaks 120 or 100 times a second. Some switch mode power supplies do as well in addition to their switching. Some do not.

A false statement made was that restricting power\current delivery is bad. This is simply not the case. Almost every power supply intentionally restricts current delivery. I will state that again. Almost every power supply intentionally restricts current delivery. The ones that do not would probably fail EMI testing, and would have noisy outputs.


Big transformers in linear supplies are excellent current filters all on their own. Their inductance and the magnetic properties of the materials they are made with naturally filter high frequencies.  That is often not enough, so high quality power supplies may add in choke (inductive) filters which provide additional high frequency filtering and soften current peaks.  Filters are put around diodes to soften their turn on/off. Every switch mode supply has EMI inductors to soften the current spikes.


Caelin made a device that measures the high frequency performance of power cables. He conveniently ignores all the wire before the power cable will limit current delivery, as it must, but does not show, other than by making a false statement, that this correlates into better audio. One could argue based on his statements and knowledge of audio equipment, that it would make things worse.