Why Power Cables Affect Sound


I just bought a new CD player and was underwhelmed with it compared to my cheaper, lower quality CD player. That’s when it hit me that my cheaper CD player is using an upgraded power cable. When I put an upgraded power cable on my new CD player, the sound was instantly transformed: the treble was tamed, the music was more dynamic and lifelike, and overall more musical. 

This got me thinking as to how in the world a power cable can affect sound. I want to hear all of your ideas. Here’s one of my ideas:

I have heard from many sources that a good power cable is made of multiple gauge conductors from large gauge to small gauge. The electrons in a power cable are like a train with each electron acting as a train car. When a treble note is played, for example, the small gauge wires can react quickly because that “train” has much less mass than a large gauge conductor. If you only had one large gauge conductor, you would need to accelerate a very large train for a small, quick treble note, and this leads to poor dynamics. A similar analogy might be water in a pipe. A small pipe can react much quicker to higher frequencies than a large pipe due to the decreased mass/momentum of the water in the pipe. 

That’s one of my ideas. Now I want to hear your thoughts and have a general discussion of why power cables matter. 

If you don’t think power cables matter at all, please refrain from derailing the conversation with antagonism. There a time and place for that but not in this thread please. 
mkgus

Showing 8 responses by doitwithlife

My P15 regenerator has a scope built into it. Makes it easy to compare the sine wave of both the input and input/output wave forms as well as the distortion. When switching between the stock cord and my upgrade cord there is a noticeable difference in the measurements.  I can't explain why, but i can measure the difference.

To my ears it sounds like letting the air out if the tires going back yo the old PC
I'd be more than happy to share a couple of images showing the differences. Someone please share with me how to post on this site.  I got my ca ble on blind faith. It lives between the wall and the regenerator. I chatted with the manufacturer and suggested there on the output to my directstream dac. I tried moving it to the dac and thats when i felt it was like taking air out of the tires. Its back at the wall now. 
The specific measurements I have are . These are with my upgraded cable.

THD in currently at 2.0 -1.9%. Was closer to 3% with factory cord

Voltage in 125.3. This doesn't change with the PC

Scope view of the input wave shows significant mess at the peak, more clipping  the leading edge than on the trailing. Its not totally obvious when doing and A/B of the waves what the difference is. What is more helpful is the difference view which shows the input wave vs the output wave. With the upgrade I see 3 peaks of correction leading and trailing. Its rough but there they are like mini waves of correction. With the factory cord this difference view is very course and haphazard. No symmetry in the difference.  My takeaway is that there is  clearly more noise in the waveform with the stock cord. Lots more correction required.  Even with the regeneration process "correcting" the waveform I'm still able to hear the difference. In my world that is powerful. 

In both cases THD out  reads 0.1% I don't know if thats as low as the unit will report or its the same measured value
I used to be in the camp of power and fancy speaker cables being the "emperors new clothes". 10-15 years ago a dealer came to the house and loaned me cables for a could of weeks. I didn’t hear anything so back they went. Lots changed since then.

@jtucker The 1st is the stock power cord, second is the upgrade.  If you mentally overlay the 1st over the full input wave you can see how it is filling in the missing tops and bottom of the incoming wave. Thanks for your comment about my system. I really enjoy listening to music these days. Still way less than what most have here.

I also added a 3rd which shows the full input sine wave. Not sure which power cord it describes. They look pretty similar in isolation. What the P15 does is bring the voltage within .1V AC of what I specify and more importantly brings back the missing top and bottom of the sine wave. I didn’t post the output sine wave but it looks very close to what you would expect a theoretical wave to be

@mkgus In my world I heard a huge difference when adding the P15 and that’s from day one. After living with it for awhile I brought in the power cord and that added another level, polish if you will

If I were asked, I’d recommend a regenerator before a power cord for audible results. Both make a difference. But then nobody asked. lol.

I would love to have visitors bring over power cords to compare, but where I live moose are the only one that like to visit

Keith
@jtucker, @thyname, @mkgus  

Sorry if I killed the discussion.  I have some new data that you 3 might appreciate. Just got another upgrade PC and dropped between the wall and regenerator. Grabbed some new graphs. Wish the detail was better, but I'm limited to the granularity of built in scope

I've added their difference plot side by side. Grabbed these 4 minutes apart so reflect my current input power. 

https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/6927
Sound wise, I'm hearing a difference not sure which I like better gonna let this one settle. Right off, my black isn't what it used to be.
@boxer12. Doesn’t bother me at all. Everyone needs a hobby! For me its horses and music.

Was talking with a traveling clinician once and he told that when speaking to a crowd if he actually reaches 1 person it was a good clinic. I’ll hang my hat on that thought. Plus the folks that are enjoyable to talk with float to the top.

As a parting thought I took some more measurements and found that with my 2 upgraded PC one has 2.1% vs 2.4% THD. Nicely my ears followed the measurements. Same song, same preamp volume setting. Also a bit different power draw in amps although its rough as different passages are drawing different currents.

Now off to consider new IC cables. Lol