PS Audio Ultimate outlet

Sedond - Often the difference between the type of gear usually prefered around here (tube amps for example) can be measured. So there is no mystery, most people here prefer higher distortion.

You cannot affect the sound of your gear by messing around with outlets or power cords. The fact that you think you can only proves how much of this business is psychological.

Craig - My intention is to save you money. I am sticking to the most obvious hoaxes. Line cords, power distributors, outlets etc. aren't in the signal path and can't even theoretically have an effect. The psychological aspect is not something that just affects the weakminded. Everybody, myself included, almost always seems to hear a difference when something is changed. The more you expect to hear a difference the more likely it is that you will.

Take line conditioners. The idea that a line conditioner reduces noise is so outlandish it can't be ridiculed. The electrons in the wire have been around for 15 billion years. Shuffling them back and forth for a few hours in an attempt to change something is preposterous. Does this stop people from hearing a significant difference. NO.

How about those arrows on the phono cables? The manufactures know perfectly well that the exact amount of current had better flow in each direction in those wires. Does that stop them from putting arrows on them. NO. They must have a very low opinion of the intelligence of audiophiles. Do you think people would hear a difference if they installed the cables with the arrow point opposite to the manufacture's suggestion? Of course they would.

Buying expensive line cords is another act of insanity. Think about it. On one end of the cord is a hundred feet of ordinary wire going round and round the transformer core and on the other end of the cord is several hundred miles or ordinary wire going back to the power source. Even if there were something special besides the price of the cord, what good is 8 feet of cool wire in line with hundreds of miles of ordinary wire going to do?

I say don't waste money on outlets, power cords, line conditions and cable conditioners.

I think exotic speaker wire is bogus too, however, at least it is in the signal path. I am going to test some cheap wire, the kind I use, as soon as I get the test equipment I have on order. The test is simple and will measured effects down to a small fraction of a db.

Spend your money on good speakers. That is where the action is. Even the very best speakers have much higher distortion than a Radio Shack receiver - as long as you are not driving the RS to clipping.

Dekay - I'm tired of your personal attacks. I noticed in one of your posts you said "The cables are marked as to the direction of use". From this I can only assume that you do not know that audio signals are AC. Or worse, you know that audio is AC but you are so confused that you think it still must make a difference at to the direction of the cables. At any rate, with your level of knowledge, should only post questions.

I don't know why people dont like this outlet. I know that a common AB comparison mistake is to not have the volumns EXACTLY the same.

Our ears are, of course, esential in determining what gear to use. Everyone, believers and non believers alike, listens to their systems. I am suggesting that there is a real phenomenon that allows us to hear differences even when comparing identical gear. The fundamental difference between the two camps here is that one group believes that every time we hear a difference it must be real. The other camp says that psychology plays a part and we have to use our reasoning ability to help avoid pitfalls in the listening process.

No money - I don't know why. I am only claiming that it has nothing to do with the fidelity of the sound. The power from the wall gets hacked up by the rectifiers and dumped into the storage capacitors. The power supplies have a significant amount of ripple on their plus and minus rails. Small irregularities on the power line will make small irregulaities on the relitively large amount of ripple on the rails. The fidelity of the sound is uneffected by this ripple until an amplifier is driven into clipping. During clipping the ripple of the power supply shows up on the top of the wave form the amp is trying to reproduce. At this point distortion is very high and audible.

There are some things that just don't need to be tested. Here is an analogy to the power cord, distribution, outlet senario. You are in a small submarine well below the surface waves (power supply ripple) whose particle's vertical movement is in a circular fashion and extends something like two times the height of the waves. Large seaguls are landing and taking off from the surface creating little waves. My contention is that in the submarine you will not feel the effect of the birds activity.

What make these products even more ridiculous is that they don't do anything to the line anyway (they don't stop the seaguls from landing). I read an ad for one of the ac line conditioners that bragged about not having any coils, filters, transformers or capacitor to spoil the quality of the sound. Of course there is no sound on the power supply side. And the very things that would clean up the ac line are the things they brag about not having.

You could by a ferroresonant transformer. They actually do clean up and stabalize the AC power. They provide constant voltage and tremendous surge protection. They won't make things sound better but they will protect your valuable equipment. Problem is that they make a lot of mechanical noise due to magnetostriction (the transformer laminations actually grow and shrink as the the magnetic field varies). If you could sound proof one in a box it would be a useful addition to your system.

No money - The scope is for a speaker project, not just to test wire as suggested. I paid less for it than many here have in their line cords - God bless Ebay.

Really, unless it has been run over by a truck, there is just nothing and outlet can do wrong. Consider all the things in series with it. Should we test the AC circuit breakers and find which ones sound best. How about the transformers on the telephone pole. I'm sure there are different brands and of course some must sound better, right? Do you think that power from nuclear plants will sound better than power from coal burning generators? These are all equally valid questions.

My engineering audiophile friend says we are missing out on making some easy money from believers. No one has considered the gross distortion that must be caused by the inline fuses. If we could just get some gold plated fuses we could sell them for a mint. I can see it now, "Forth Dimension Audiophile Gold Fuses". Only $45.00. Improved mid-range definition, huge soundfield without loss of spacial precision, tighter bass, faster dynamic damping suppression and reduced stress on power supply components. Get your fuses from people understand what you want.

No money - I might be wrong on this but I think that lower octane fuel has a litte more energy per gallon. So, if your octane is high enough to avoid pre-ignition you get a tiny bit more performance with the cheap stuff.

Listen, the only way an outlet can misbehave, assuming it's not broken or intermittant, is to have higher resistance. If it has higher resistance, it will get warm or hot or make smoke if it is transfering much power. Even if it is smoking while the music is playing it will not effect the sound as long as it is not robbing so much power that the amplifier is prematurely clipping.

There is a genuinely valuable thing to be learned from your listening test. And you will not be the first to learn it. It is, however, not that outlets sound different. The story that I posted to Sean over in "Speaker Wire Science of Psychology" is a true story. Check it out.

Garfish - I am not only accomplishing nothing, you will be pleased to know, I am less and less interested in accomplishing anything here.