Why not?

Think about how much time effort and money goes into r&d for a single product.

What R&D?

Most of these cables have no measurements, and more like R&D derived from a creative writing course.

For the same reason GM doesn't make tires. They instead partner with Michelin and try to sell you the recommended tires through a back door. GM does cars and they leave it at that. Your are asking a question from a marketing point of view that has a marketing driven answer.

It is probably closer to what brand of fuel that goes into the tank.
It is not like fuel derived from a T-Rex is better than Brontosaurus, or swamp, based fuel.

@holmz

I was talking about the components not the cord!

Well others are mentioning power cords.
My old gear had a detached power supply, and my newer (old gear) also has a detached power supply… so maybe it was designed not to need an ex[enive power cable?

I use mostly Mogami and Neutrik ends for DIY ICs, but I am also trying some silver IC cable and ETI ends.

Mogami (and Cardas, etc.) do at least publish the capacitance and inductance specs of the raw IC cable, as well as their speaker cable. Kimber also publishes those specs. The ones that do not publish those specs, I assume have no real R&D, nor the equipment to measure things… And they also fall mostly into what I call “the creative writing group.”

I would like to hear the difference, but I really have a hard time convincing myself that one low capacitance and low inductance cable sounds different than another.
When I basically cannot tell them apart, I conclude it is because they mostly make no difference.

Which Cardas or Kimber cables did you try Sherlock Holmes that did not make any difference? And on what?

@thyname
My dear @Watson)

The tone of your post makes it look like you are invested in the idea of power cables, and I trust the manufacturers to make their power supplies robust enough not to require special power cables.

I have not tried either of those power cables on the Nagra front end gear, nor on the Audible Illusions Modulus preamp.

If I found one to try I would be open to that, but I am pretty happy with the sound.

And in reality there is no way that the power cord is going to make it sing. If I was going to piss away that kind of money, I would be more likely to just go for the Nagra battery pack and not run any power cord into the Nagra gear.

The power supply supplies 12V, so unless I can see some smoother 12V, I am not likely to be swayed by well crafted creative writing.
But I would be open to trying it if it were readily available.

I would be even more likely to try these things if they showed the power supply voltage being more stable with their special cable than without it. But without some evidence, it devolves into the world of prose.

“Cable denier “ is a term attached to people who declare (and for some reason pollute all audio forums) cables do NOT matter without even trying them. I hope this helps. Best regards

But “Cable denier” is a term applied by cable believers. And in a degrading fashion.

It is really the responsibility of the person spruicking this stuff to prove it makes any difference, and not devolve into some “emperors new clothes” arguement. I mean we do have measurement equipment to show that a power supply supplies power, and at a constant voltage.

In a rational world we would have evidence that some cable helps, or does not help.
And then if it helps, does it help systems A and B, but not systems C and D?

I can imagine that some cables could help some systems, but systems that are designed with good power supplies would not likely need a multi thousand dollar cable.

@holmz nothing wrong with a stout power cable to accompany a stout power supply.

Correct @jerryg123 - but the question is ”does anything become more right with a stout cable?”
In terms of front end gear we have nothing shown so far to suggest that it is “more right” to run a different cable.

Going from a 16ga to a 10ga on an amp seems more right. But iut would be nice to see it.

 

Nor is there anything wrong with a interconnect and speaker cables built to a higher standard than lamp cord.

Also true.
We have measurement specs for ICs, and also for some speaker cables.

I am not sure from the OPs post whether they are talking about power cables, speaker cables, or ICs.

The speaker cables and ICs have more of an impact than a power cord, and especially on equipment that is running a centralised power supply.

 

Why all the back and forth? Just try some better power cords — either buy used and sell at little/no loss or buy direct from the many direct sellers and take advantage of their generous trial/return policies — and if they don’t make a significant improvement stick with the generic PCs and live happily ever after. What I can’t accept is when people just reject out of hand PCs can make a difference and never even try better cables yet preach that better PCs can’t make a difference because there are no measurements to support it. That’s just willful ignorance, and as @ghdprentice as a scientist has stated and while he might not fully understand why PCs make a significant difference, in reality they do in his experience for whatever reason.

As a scientist I can understand that if one shows something happening on a DC supply then I know that the cord changed things.

And I also understand that people generally have a psychological bias to expect a change.

 

Bottom line — not everything is measurable relative to what the human ear can hear.

That seems like it is a bit of a magical way of thinking.

1. The people that design the electronics are more often thick glasses wearing types that understand the science.
2. The power cable people are more along the social sciences tract, that understand human nature and prose.

I would be looking for the best of group #1, before I looked for group #2.
Going for group #2, sort of implies that one should have been considering the group #1, but decided not to.

Secondly; the onus should not be upon the rational to prove that other are not hearing voices, it is upon those that hear the things to provide some evidence or reasoning that their stories have a basis is reality.

 

So for those of you who follow the dogma that PCs shouldn’t make a difference, you’ve got no excuse as it’s free, or very near free, to try several brands and use your ears to see if they make a difference. If they don’t, then fine you’re right where you started from with some good personal experience to support your beliefs. If you haven’t yet tried better PCs, what are you afraid of — that your preconceived world might be upset and you can’t explain why? Who cares? If you get better sound you win whether you can explain it in measurements or not. Sheesh.

Another approach is that It is entirely possible that some gear does enjoy a change from a power cord swap. (But probably the gear that I would not be looking at.)

Most of the quality gear is designed well, and putting specials cords on sub standard gear is sort like putting lipstick, or spats, onto a pig. (It does make for a better looking and more handsome pig.)

It is usually pretty easy to call the distributor or manufacturer to ask them.

This is sort of exactly as @bruce19 asked at the end of his post:

Mostly I would like to know if I am wrong and there are some examples of manufacturers who either include, offer or recommend specific power, interconnect and speaker cable for their products. Thanks community members for offering a place to ask this question that keeps gnawing at me.

Here you go @bruce19:
For the example of Nagra, their agent agrees with @soix and others.
(But they also basically said to consider the 12V battery ahead of a power cord.)

I would be asking @atmasphere, Suprateck, AR, Purifi etc. if they recommend a different power cord or not… and why? And if it has been tested?

 

Here is exactly what the local Swiss agent told me:

If running constantly off the mains power I would say yes, upgrading a power cord would make a difference sonically.

If going the battery option, I wouldn’t worry too much about power cables as once your in battery mode - the interconnects would make a larger difference here

I’;ll admit that ^This^ came a surprise to me… Their MPS (power supply) is not cheap. And it sounds pretty nice.

 

I’ll probably get a spare Lemo connector made, and try and quantify the voltage stability.
Then if I try a power cord, I could run the 12V through a power divider and digitise it with an ADC and have some objective data.

 

I hate to make assumptions too, so I don’t @lalitk , but I will say you seem to have a talent for being abrasive even when you say you don’t mean to. Being lazy or cheap are not the only reasons someone might be dismayed at the state of the cable market. Allow me to explain how I see it with a story.

Suppose your doctor tells you you need a pacemaker. Once you’ve accepted that fact she asks if you want the standard connecting cable or the premium one. She says, "I’m obliged to tell you that there is no measurable difference between the two and no data one is better than the other and the premium one costs 100 times what the standard one does. By the way it’s not covered by insurance but a lot of people like to get the premium one."

The difference is that medicine is part of science, and there are standards like double blind tests, the AMA, CDC, FDA, etc that regulate that they are “doing no harm”… just like the old Greek Hippocrates advocated.

The “It feels good” branch of homeopathics, and aeroma therapy, etc. may work, or may not… but there is little evidence that it does, and is viewed as “witch doctor medicine” from a western perspective…

And hence we do not have aftermarket cables on pacemakers, nor aftermarket power cords nor batteries.

That gear has to work as intended, and there is no room for the subjective experience to be considered worthwhile when defibrillating.

It objectively becomes pretty clear whether a defibrillator works or not.

 

Would you feel that is an acceptable state of affairs? I would not, but I bet many if not most people and maybe me too would end up buying the premium cable. That’s how I feel about the hifi cable business these days. So I’m seeking ways to try and change that.

I am looking forwards to what you come up with.

I kind of like your pacemaker analogy.
(I have a soft spot in my heart for it 😍)

@soix and @holmz Funny story about that. A friend lent me a pair of MIT Terminator2 speaker cables. I put them in my system, replacing some Crutchfield generic cables, and was amazed! Clarity, texture! I was so smitten I bought a pair of MIT Terminator2 interconnects just to see if what I was hearing could be further enhanced. Sure enough, better still. Enjoyed them for a couple of months, reveling in what I was hearing. Time came to give them back, which I really was sad to do. Determined i would have to get a set of my own. Replaced them with the old cable. Everything still sounded good. I could not find fault with the system.

@bruce19

1. Those MITs have an actual box on the end of them with a Zobel network filter
   1. They measure different as well as sound different
2. Speaker cables carry more current than any other part of the system, and are often long,

I would be very surprised if they were not different than, say, a lamp cord.

 

@holmz Ah, I see. You don’t trust your own ears. Got it.

I certainly do not trust them to make a decision on a cable after a 250 mile drive up to the shops that sell them, and know how it will sound in my room... With my speakers and electronics, and the power where I live, relative to what the power is in the shop that sells them..

 

You and @ghdprentice would have an interesting conversation as two scientists with polar opposite views on cables.

We are sort of trying to have some of that here.

 

Why not just try an aftermarket PC just to see/hear for yourself? What are you afraid of

Mostly blowing through funds, but it could be social signalling that I am not a sucker. Most of the social science types say that we do things without knowing the real reasons why we do them. So I am open to possibilities there.

 

— that your comfortable and convenient world of theories and measurements might implode if your ears tell you they’re hearing actual improvements? Or maybe you won’t find any improvements or maybe even decreased performance. Either way, that’s called learning — a concept I’d think a scientist would embrace

What you describe is not “learning” so much as its is “experiencing”. What would I have learned?

It is a somewhat more common theme to want to know why things work the way that they do. And also to have theories and laws to describe it’ll, so as to be able to repeat the process.

Would could probably make an analogy with wine. If the SO and I are having a certain meal, I know that the Tempranillo or Grenache will be great with it, from experience. I am not exactly 100% interested in how the ph and tannins, etc. combine, but if I was a vitaculturalist I probably would be keening interested in that.

And the same people consistently produce the drops year on year, and can explain how they do it.

 

Would you, or anyone else, agree that:

1. That the power supply stability/stiffness is primarily what we want to be as stiff as possible?
2. As the power supply capacitance gets larger and large, that the DC voltage would be more and more stable?
3. In my case, running off of a battery would be the more preferable option as opposed to a putting those funds into a power cable?

 

 

@thyname

Do you remember @almarg? (RIP) He was a widely respected audiophile in our Audigon community. With a doctorate in EE, he had been awarded several utility patents over his career.

He believed that technology progresses - from anecdotal to evidentiary. His approach was to try to figure out the ’why & how’ variables might influence sound quality. It was a fun for him. Like solving a mystery - or a puzzle

He sounds like he was an interesting and likeable fellow.

I make am probably not so gracious, but I’ll try:

1. If one wants to avoid spending heaps of time and $ on ICs, then they may want to consider XLR/balanced equipment.
2. If they want to avoid spending time and money on speaker cables, then may want to consider running mono blocks (with short speaker cables) and using amps that drive complex loads easily
   1. and consider using speakers that are easy loads to drive.
3. If they want to avoid power cord dramas, and power grid concerns, then they may want to look for manufacturers that claim that their systems do all the filtering and supply, and have have “overbuilt” power supplies.

I cannot imagine that a cord that is connected on an expensive outlet, into and expensive input on the amp, would be better than using the same cord attached directly to the amp in a captive sense.
And also wire nutted directly to the incoming wall power.

it is not a vacuum cleaner, where we want to move it room to room.

All those extra interfaces are places for trouble, and outlets that grip better, with no corroding materials have an advantage, as well as inlet power connections that do the same. They are just a lot more complicated and engineered than a captive cord, and they try to get back what is lost by not using a captive cord… or at least not give up any more ground.

 

@holmz I said…

— that your comfortable and convenient world of theories and measurements might implode if your ears tell you they’re hearing actual improvements? Or maybe you won’t find any improvements or maybe even decreased performance. Either way, that’s called learning — a concept I’d think a scientist would embrace

To which you reply…

What you describe is not “learning” so much as its is “experiencing”. What would I have learned?

Wow. Just…wow. If you’re saying you can’t learn through new experiences we are truly on different planets

I ended it with a question… which was, “What would I have learned?“

It is like going to a magic show and seeing a trick. What do I learn there, from that experience?
I do not really believe that the fellow saws the woman in half, and then she is put back together. And I certainly do not believe that I should try it at home.

I have no idea how he did it.
I only know that magic tricks seem real.

So what would I learn with the power cord? That it seems to work?
I would still not know how or why it works, or if is more ythan psychology.

 

Listening to some power cord, is not like riding a bicycle, or learning to ski, where the experience is learning.
With a powercord, we cannot have someone watch us from the lodge, or at the velodrome and ourselves and everyone else can all think together, “that person can ski (or ride a bike).”

With the power cord all we have some testimony that someone believes it works.
So we know that “they think it works”… in their place… with their gear. But that does not tell us if it work on our gear, with our place in the power grid.

It would be like the bicycle rider talking about the feeling of wind through the hair. But if we have not felt it, then how would we know?

If we can see them riding, and we can see their hair blowing, then we can more easily believe that their hair is being blown by the wind from the riding. And we also know how to ride, then their feelings are something that can empathise with or otherwise understand.

 

With the power cord all we have some testimony that someone believes it works. So we know that “they think it works”… in their place… with their gear. But that does not tell us if it work on our gear, with our place in the power grid.

@holmz Hence you yourself have just presented the perfect rationale for trying a PC in your own system, but you refuse to do that for some reason. Whatever. To each his own. Peace out

I probably have better things to spend money on, then fixing a problem that I am not sure I have.

And if it is mostly psychological, or if I think that it is psychological, then it is already doubtful to work - or doubtful that I would admit that it works.

Thirdly - as has been mentioned a few times, even the manufacture says that in my system, the battery option is better than a power cord.

So why would I half-ass it? By doing a cable… when that is deemed as substandard to the battery?

 

Line up all the cables, do blind testing and publish the results.  If there really is an improvement in sound, it should be apparent to all, or at least most.  I suspect very few cable manufacturers will allow their feet to be held to the fire

Yeah @bigtwin - that is just more work than people want to do. They only want us to believe what they believe, and not show that is repeatable.