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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. 
128x128mkgus
boxer12
8,656 posts
 
Kosst, 
" Why not spend $1500 on a power cord that would do the same job as a $5 length of 14g lamp cord and $10 worth of caps, resistors, and inductors! If your goal is to clean up the power supply, THEN FIX THE POWER SUPPLY. This isn't rocket surgery!"
A couple things here:
1. There is no such thing as "rocket surgery"
2. You don't need to spend $1500 to get an improvement from a power cord
3. The power supply of an amplifier is not the end all to sound quality.  
phomchick's avatar
phomchick
209 posts
 
Has anyone done an ABX test of power cords and seen a positive result?
yang_hong
13 posts
 
That's what I'm wondering too. Would love to see if anyone has done that. 
prof
3,473 posts
 

@boxer12

mrdecibel wrote: "Again, after the last post from prof and analogluvr, they are simply missing out on the fact that " after market power cables " make a difference, and generally, improvements. So, while I am enjoying these improvements in sq in my listening, they are still battling it. "

In other words, he confidently declares he gets to enjoy the audible benefits of AC cables while poor sods like us "battle" the idea. As if there are no POSSIBLE downsides to his claim.

Therefore I presented an alternative POSSIBILITY - note how I used that word? It’s not a declaration of fact, only another POSSIBILITY that others may consider - that of paying much more money for products that don’t in fact do what they claim to do - even if mrdecibel refuses to ever question his position.

I’ve been presenting a reasoned defense for skepticism about AC cable claims, with civility, and constantly keeping those claims modest and saying "I could be wrong, I’m not claiming anyone here is wrong, I’m not claiming to know people aren’t hearing sonic differences, I’m open to the idea AC cables alter sound."
Again...that is FAR more open minded and conciliatory to the other side than the attitude the pro-cable folks have shown me here.

Whereas folks like nonoise reply with insults like "you have issues" and mrdecibel "I have no reason to respond to your ignorance or foolishness."

Why don’t you take their tone to task, I wonder?


Why do the Cable supporters get the free pass with snark and insult, but presenting an alternative view is "derailing" a thread with "antagonism?"

I keep trying to shine at least some light on the weird bias that goes on here, where cable-lovers seem like they process any skepticism as either dogmatism or antagonistic, and THEY are the ones who typically respond with blatantly insulting tones.




prof
3,473 posts
 
"Has anyone done an ABX test of power cords and seen a positive result?"


Not that I’ve ever read.

But FWIW.....


https://hometheaterhifi.com/volume_11_4/feature-article-blind-test-power-cords-12-2004.html

There are some forms of doing a blind test, even without an ABX box, that seem to me viable. E.g. if you could get two units of the same CD player or DAC, use a stock cable on one, after market cable on the other, run them through a pre-amp that can switch between them, and set up a blind test.   There's a post, or blog out there somewhere that I read, where a guy in pro audio did just that, as he ended up being sent two of the same DAC, which made it easy to do the after market AC cable test.  Results were negative for detecting sonic differences.

(I did something similar with CD players and DACs, though one DAC had a volume control which made it particularly good for matching levels. I easily identified differences between them in those blind tests btw...which goes to show it’s not the case that all blind tests reult in negative findings or "blind testing by nature erases audible differences" or whatever).

I’d do it myself if I had two identical DACs. I actually have the Benchmark 1 and the Benchmark 2 DAC. But as they are not strictly identical units, the claim could always be made that this presents another variable.

I haven’t actually set up the Benchmark 2 DAC yet, so maybe if I can pull off a blind test between it and the DAC 1 that might be interesting. (And if I can’t detect a sonic difference between them, in principle that would be a baseline for an AC cable test...hmm.....)



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