About all I can say is beliefs can oft be very strong and hard to change.
The Truth About Power Cords and there "Real" Price to Performance
This is a journey through real life experiences from you to everyone that cares to educate themselves. I must admit that I was not a believer in power cords and how they affect sound in your system. I from the camp that believed that the speaker provided 75% of the sound signature then your source then components but never the power cord. Until that magic day I along with another highly acclaimed AudioGoner who I will keep anatomist ran through a few cables in quite a few different systems and was "WOWED" at what I heard. That being said cable I know that I am not the only believer and that is why there are so many power cord/cable companies out there that range from $50 to 20-30 thousand dollars and above. So I like most of you have to scratch my head and ask where do I begin what brand and product and what should i really pay for it?
The purpose of this discussion to get some honest feed back on Price to Performance from you the end user to us here in the community.
Please fire away!
The purpose of this discussion to get some honest feed back on Price to Performance from you the end user to us here in the community.
Please fire away!
Showing 50 responses by geoffkait
Oh, I don’t know, I think this high cost for certain audiophile products is a little bit irrelevant. There are $650,000 speakers, $16,000 cartridges, $120,000 turntables. So what? It doesn’t necessarily advance the science OR the performance to go all out on money. And who can do it? 1/2 of 1%? As I said somewhere earlier even One Million Dollar systems can oft go awry. I would say it’s hard to prove the value of things, generally, but especially when the cost is astronomical. Money can’t buy me love. |
Feynman cautioned that to avoid becoming cargo cult scientists, researchers must avoid fooling themselves, be willing to question and doubt their own theories and their own results, and investigate possible flaws in a theory or an experiment. He recommended that researchers adopt an unusually high level of honesty which is rarely encountered in everyday life, and gave examples from advertising, politics, and psychology to illustrate the everyday dishonesty which should be unacceptable in science. |
Vinylguy2016 As an example, I am the proud owner of a highly coveted Marantz Model 7 tube preamplifier, which was originally fitted by Marantz with a heavy, but otherwise standard power cable. I cannot imagine how the impeccable performance of this unit could possibly be degraded by the absence of a "high end" power cord. >>>>Define impeccable performance. |
turnbowm41 vinylguy2016, Being an engineer (EE) with 30+ years of experience in the industry... >>>>>>One assumes the industry you’re referring to is not audio. |
I would be very surprised if anyone who makes cables or power cords in the last 30 years ever said high capacitance or high inductance were virtues. I guess what I’m saying is what else is new? But surely we can agree there are other desirable cable and power cord characteristics. Please don’t tell me it all comes down to L, R, C. That horse has been beat to death. |
What so-called magic claims by cable or power cord manufacturers are you referring to? I suspect you are making this up just so you can go off on one of your pseudo-scientist rampages, atdavid, Ethan or whoever. https://youtu.be/VEaLpslkwDE |
And what magic claims are those, Mr. Bluster? What have I done now? By the way, I knew you couldn’t answer my first question, the one about magic claims for cables and power cords. Because there aren’t any. Duh! For someone who doesn’t read my posts you seem a little bit obsessed with me, just an observation. My suggestion - take a long cold shower. Side note - I broke two of your sacred laws of physics today and it’s not even dinnertime. How does that make you feel? Angry, I bet. 😡 |
I have no objection whatsoever to anyone doing blind tests, which they probably don’t anyway, but results of a single blind test - or any test - have no meaning because so many things can go wrong with the test. It’s a complicated system. A lot of things can go wrong and affect results. A lot of people seem to think it’s a slam dunk and case closed. But that’s not true at all. Evidence is the accumulation of the results of many tests, test on different systems and by different persons. This is especially true for negative results, which is what the pseudo skeptics are prognosticating - negative results. Hel-loo! 🤗 |
OK, I’ll be the first one to bring it up. There’s no such thing as a “scientifically controlled test,” at least for anything audio related, because nobody can control all the variables involved. There’s no MIL-STD for controlled test, even AES doesn’t have a protocol for Controlled Blind Testing. The Amazing Randi had a protocol for controlled blind testing calculated so nobody could pass. Geez, nobody even know what all the variables are. But if you want to pretend test, be my guest! Hey, that rhymes! 🤗 |
I don’t know if it qualifies for super human hearing but I can hear a mouse fart from 20 feet and yes, I passed a scientifically controlled double blind test. No, wait, it was actually only three blind mice. OK, let’s get this straight. Am I attacking those who think controlled blind tests are important or valid. Yes. And I think it’s funny. And I’m tired of pretending it’s not. Comedy is subjective, Isn’t that what they say? All of you people, the system that knows so much, you decide what’s right or wrong. The same way that you decide what’s funny or not. 🤗 |
prof To take a hypothetical example, if a cable manufacturer claims they have reduced the presence of a distortion that occurs in the frequency of 25kHz which therefore produces a "better sounding cable," that’s a claim that does not require all this personal musical history mumbo jumbo to investigate. Right off the bat there is reason to be skeptical, given the well known *general* limits to human hearing. So right off the bat it would make sense to ask for evidence we can even HEAR the problem being claimed. >>>>That’s weird. I don’t recall any cable manufacturer ever making that claim. Did you just make that up? I suspect you might be over thinking it. 😛 |
delkal But my personal experiences are just anecdotal. Someone will always say my system isn’t revealing enough or I didn’t know what to listen for (or I am just ignorant). So that is why I keep asking.........why can’t find I any reliable sources on the internet where someone can repeatedly tell a difference when listening blinded? Or why can’t the people who claim a cable "instantly transformed their system" do the same test, do it blinded with someone else switching it, and tell us about it? This should have been proven long ago. >>>>Good questions! Who the hell knows? That’s just the way it goes sometimes. |
I hate to judge before all the facts are in but it appears none of the $50 power cord folks have run across any of the great many reviews of the AudioQuest Hurricane Power Cord, or other Storm series power cords, mostly on audio forums and Facebook and right here on Audiogon. Could all those reviews be paid advertisements? A coincidence? A global conspiracy? A prank? Or is it evidence that there is in fact life after $50? Positive Feedback review, trigger warning ⚠️ https://positive-feedback.com/reviews/hardware-reviews/audioquest-storm-series-and-niagara-ac-power-... “I looked for evidence but I was unable to find any.” - Naysayers’ lament |
I hope I’m not being to harsh here but it certainly appears atdavid STILL doesn’t know the difference between evidence and proof. Juror #3 from 12 Angry Men: But you can’t prove it!! 😡 How do we discern reality? We observe it. Empirical evidence is one of the cornerstones of the scientific method. Hel-loo! |
atdavid Hardware store IEC cords are often 18awg, maybe 16awg, while good, but not very expensive shielded cords targeted at instrumentation are $10's of dollars, not hundreds. >>>>>That’s gold, Jerry, gold! Question to atdavid, do you have a logical fallacy generator on your computer or do you make these things up yourself? |
The one cord I would get if I had the money AND if I still used power cords would be the AudioQuest Hurricane, you know the one that respects the inherent directionality of wire, the own that goes for around $4,000. Why? I’ve heard things. People talk. Oops a-daisy! The Price Range wasn’t wide enough. |
One irony for cable tests, blind tests or whatever, is that new cables almost always sound quite bad relatively speaking, so what purpose would testing new cables serve? The other irony is perhaps more subtle, especially for you new guys, but unplugging a cable destroys the delicate electrical mechanical interface where the cable is connected. It takes at least a day or two to establish or restore that delicate connection once the cable is plugged in. Same for power cords. Conclusion, all (rpt all) cable tests are bogus unless you are willing to be extremely patient. Most cable swappers are like bulls in a china shop. As Bob Dylan says at the end of his records, good luck to everyone! Of course the big chicken 🐔 in the room is wire directionality. Why would anyone test cables that are in the wrong direction? Hel-loo! “Because it’s what I choose to believe.” - Dr. Elizabeth Shaw in Prometheus |
I hate to judge too harshly but it seems a lot easier to satisfy the Naysayers as to what constitutes a “scientifically controlled test.” The reason I say that is because, by their own words, naysayers almost always have the least firm grip on what all the variables are. Not to mention anyone with bad intent can make the test impossible to pass. Thus, Naysayers are LEAST able to control all the variables. Make sense? |
delkal So it appears there is no way to set up a "scientific" test test that will make everyone happy audiophiles will be debating this for the rest of time............. >>>>By Jove, I think he’s got it! 🤗 |
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Be careful, we don’t want to wise up these guys too much. It can serve no good porpoise. 🐬 Wasn’t it WC Fields who said never smarten up a chump? I only mean that in a nice way. Joke. Two guys are sitting next to each other on the airplane. One guy is looking out the window and says, hey, those people down there look like ants! The second guy says, they are ants. We haven’t left the ground yet. |
Oscillation frequency of alternating current and voltage 🔚🔜 is not the same thing as frequency of the signal. It is a semantic argument. Just as the audio waveform does not ever travel down a single wire. There is no frequency of the signal when it travels down one wire, and in the opposite direction on the other wire. I.e., the wires are not vibratory. They are subject to external vibration, however. It’s a semantic argument. Electrical power doesn’t have a frequency. Energy doesn’t have a frequency. The audio signal is not vibrating, it’s oscillating. An any instant in time it can only be going in one direction. 🔜 |
delkal geoffait- To get a speaker to produce sound you need an oscillating current of some frequency and AC power is distributed as an oscillating current at 60 Hz. >>>>Huh? That’s what I just said. |