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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 3 responses by glupson

glupson
7,842 posts
 
bigkidz,


"...if you can use a soldering device, most of the time you wouldn’t look for a cable or cord first to tune in your system."

It may not be directly related to why people sometimes obsess with cables but many are not that good with actual manual work inside of some piece. In fact, to them (us) it is kind of intimidating to see what is inside. I opened one component yesterday to change a hard drive. No soldering, just four easy screws. Still, I was very happy that most of the parts were relatively far from that hard drive. I did, just for the heck of it, change the direction of one of the fuses, though. That is as far as I could go with fiddling inside. You are, obviously, way more advanced than me and, I suspect, than many here who talk about these things. I doubt that is the main reason for cable industry blooming, but may have a little bit to do with it.
glupson
7,842 posts
 
"But I left you with a tribe of headhunters in Borneo...….How did you ever end up back in the USA? (and not just as a tiny shrunken head?)"
Audiogon is a source of information about everything. Debates about cables and fuses may not be that useful, but other information trickles through.

I just learned about Borneo. I only knew about Jivaros. How did they come up with the same shrinking custom being so far apart?
glupson
7,842 posts
 
"Can somebody just please mail the non believers a spare power cord they have lying around ."
Could you include "undecided due to no experience"?
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