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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 1 response by wqgq_641

wqgq_641
59 posts
 
I have really appreciated @elizabeth 's comments on how you listen on this thread. I recently replaced my entire system after a lot of A/B testing at a dealer who left me alone in the room to listen but when I got it all home I wasn't happy, I was hyper critical and trying to work out what the weak link was, Cables? DAC? Room? Placement?. I went away on business for a week, came back and was listening to Hilary Hahn Plays Bach and losing myself in the sheer beauty and suddenly realized it sounded totally different to how it had a week ago. The problem wasn't the room or the equipment, it was me. I'm a computer engineer, over analytical and deeply cynical i.e. desperately trying to listen to the SQ of new equipment rather than the music. After a trip away I 'forgot' to listen critically and got in the zone - what a world of difference.
In summary, to me audio connects are like night and day - I hated optical in my system and love Chord Clearline COAX. Speaker cables are a smaller difference to me but I can hear a difference. I strongly believe power cables shouldn't make a difference from an engineering point of view but I will at least try BLE Design and see if A/B I can hear a difference (I have PS Audio hospital grade socket and a Panamax power conditioner).
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