Why do I need power management if I have a great power cord?

Maybe we should throw dedicated outlets into the mix, just to allow the denialists a trifecta!

People who say it's all snake oil raise two questions for me:

1. Do you think that these cords and conditioners have just been fooling everyone for decades? And they are too stupid to realize it and too deluded to know that they are not hearing a difference? If your answer is "yes" then you have a very low opinion of thousands of audiophiles.

2. Have you tried it? And if you had and it made no difference *to you* are you then just willing to extrapolate from one example to everyone else who does hear a difference?

@nonoise Agreed. Are you ready for none of them to answer my two questions? They won't, I predict. (Bracing for powerful challenge in 3...2...1...)

@raysmtb1 Thanks. So there's you, your friends plus I guess others with your conclusions. Then there are thousands who testify to a difference. Shall we call it a draw and agree that it's important for people to test it out for themselves? You did that and have reached a justified conclusion...for your ears, setup, etc.

@ghdprentice "High end audio is a very complex endeavor… full of ambiguity and complexity."

Well said. The problem is not "trying to prove a negative," as someone else said, the problem is to hear something that one does not yet know how to hear. Hearing is mostly interpretation and only partly physical. One needs to know what to listen for.

I think of the days before OLED TV’s. People would say, "This IS a black background." Then, much blacker blacks came along and people could now see that they had been missing something. And it was not just the blacks. It was everything on the screen. Everything gets better -- and the whole experience gets better.

So, the first reaction -- "This is just 'up-selling' or 'snake oil' -- turns out to be wrong. What folks came to learn was that quieting visual noise (making backgrounds blacker) changes the foreground by changing the background. That is very hard for people to understand, because they are focused -- almost exclusively -- on what is in the foreground. The fundamental mistake they make is to disconnect foreground and background. They are entangled for both perception and conception. @mahgister makes this point very well when he tries to direct attention to the room's acoustics. But his point applies very well to the technological devices' designs and their power sources, too.

This point about the "blacker background" applies pari passu to other things besides background noise; the way highs, mids, bass registers are expressed by speakers, the way transients and dynamics are shaped. And the technologies that make all these areas better are often not easy to grok, which is why your suggestions of resources like Robert Harley is so appropriate.

@hickamore Agreed. Mileage varies, but the thing about calling it all BS is that the denier gets the relief of emotional closure. Not denying them that pleasure; the problem emerges when their closure is proffered as empirical proof for a more general claim. That's where they go wrong, though others seeking closure like to pile on to support their faulty reasoning.

noske, I asked of deniers, "Do you think that these cords and conditioners have just been fooling everyone for decades?" For the record, your answer is "yes."

I’ll agree we should remove the word "stupid" and let the person who thinks *everyone* has been fooled *for decades* use their own adjective to characterize so many people buying useless gear -- or just forego attaching any adjectives at all. This is a hobby. Let people have their audio kabuki!

There is nothing careless about that reasoning. Thinking so is reasoning carelessly.

@bruce19 

So my observation is that a blacker background on a tv does not make the programming better or worse. However if you focus on the blackness of the background you can make yourself unhappy with your equipment. Is that a smart thing to do?....Is there such a thing as 'optimal stopping' in audio? I think so.

I would agree that there is such a thing as optimal stopping. What I have found recently -- by adding a relatively inexpensive linear power supply to my streamer -- is that the content (or "programming") *did* get better because I was able to hear instruments and notes that were not previously available to me. If that occurred by adding better power to my whole system, it would be quite reasonable to do.

So,  perhaps, one metric to answer your excellent question -- roughly, "When is it optimal to stop improving the system?" -- is this: *when no more content is added or improved significantly.* Or even, *when I cannot justify spending this money, here.*

Knowing when to stop is kind of a judgment call which comes down to each of us. It's that same part of us that knows when to stop eating at an "all you can eat" buffet!