@mkgus
This got me thinking as to how in the world a power cable can affect sound. I want to hear all of your ideas.
Ok. Here’s one: It could be your perception that changed, not the actual sound. Bias, expectation effect, imagination, etc. There are many biases - "expectation bias" being one well known bias where you expect the "better" or more expensive item to perform better and...viola!...it does!
But a very important point to absorb is that such expectation bias is not at all the whole story in terms of explaining perceptual phenomena. Even if you don’t go in with an opinion either way that A will sound better, or even different, than B, the mere act of focusing your attention to look for differences can in of itself cause the perception of the sound to "change." This is amply demonstrated by blind tests were you don’t switch between A and B but the subject thinks you are switching. Often enough they’ll choose one as sounding better than the "other" even though they are listening to the same thing.
And you don’t even have to be in the mindset of looking for a difference to go awry in your inferences. Again, our minds and nervous system are quite plastic and for a myriad of reasons something can please one day, but not another. So someone can put on his system and find "I like the way it sounds today better than I did yesterday." And then he can *presume* that this alteration in perception had an objective source, so "something changed in the system, not me." "Oh...little did I know I’d left X tweak on the component" or whatever, so THAT must have caused the system to sound better *even though I wasn’t trying to perceive any differences!*
Our senses and cognition are amazing. But far from perfect. And unfortunately they introduce these types of variables in to the problem of trying to ascertain what’s happening in any perceptual pursuit. You can just ignore this, as many do. But if we want to really be careful about trying to understand the nature of an apparent change, the ideal method takes perceptual bias and error into account.
As I’ve written before several times: I once thought an expensive power cord "obviously" changed the sound of my system.
But...I knew that as compelling as my subjective experience was, I could be in error. When I blind tested it against a cheap power cord, every "obviously different" aspect of it’s sound from the cheap power cord vanished. Trying to tell a difference was utterly random. To engage in blind testing is to get a real lesson in the power of perceptual bias.Many assume perceptual biases produce only very subtle effects. No, they can be quite profound.
Now...that ISN’T to say other explanations aren’t correct, and that the power cord did in fact alter the signal audibly in the way you perceived.
But, if you are really that interested in the truth of your experience, I think the above is well worth considering.
Personally, though I am open to the idea of AC cables changing the sound, I am at this point skeptical due to my own experience with them, particularly the lessons learned blind testing those and other items, and because the claims made by manufacturers are of a frankly suspicious nature - claims made about technical problems in AC causing audible problems, but virtually never objective evidence for the product’s claims in the audio domain.And over the years I’ve seen electrical engineers (who don’t have a vested interest in selling cables) eviscerate many of the fishy claims by AC cable manufacturers.
Hey...you asked... ;-)
Cheers.
