The Truth About Power Cords and there "Real" Price to Performance

Holy Guacamole! No sooner do I mention Cargo Cultists one of them shows up! Wow! Was that a coinkidink or what? Deprogrammers are standing by. You have to love it when someone says something is “not even remotely debatable for an educated mind.” Isn’t that some sort of tip-off?

You are trying to take complex things that happen in 3 dimensional sound field that is time variant and apply that to an simple electrical signal with absolutely no proof of the claims you effectively make about said electrical signal


A two channel initially mechanical system, i.e. the ear, with a 20khz bandwidth, if you are lucky, can detect microsecond timing differentials ... Just like two microphones with a 20khz bandwidth digitized at 44.1Khz can resolve microsecond time of arrival differences. This is very well understood and done day in and day out with all manner of signals.  There is no magic, there is no unknown branch of physics not yet understood, and even if we don’t understand all the neural pathways that does not change the fact that our hearing starts as a mechanical system that has not been shown to extend in bandwidth past 20Khz. Even experiments that indicated potential detection of ultrasonics were not able to show ultimately that it was not subharmonic resonances that were detected.


Your statement about us not having the hardware for electrical fine signal analysis required for human acoustic testing is simply not supportable. That claim is based on misunderstandings and knowledge gaps such as the belief that 44.1Khz (or 192Khz) digitization cannot carry within subsample, microsecond timing information. It can, within the bandwidth of the hearing system. Couple a flawed understanding of digitized and reconstructed analog signals and the information they carry and the potential for a bandwidth limited system to provide detection capability much faster than that bandwidth and you get the statements below which are not based in facts nor supportable with anything passing for evidence.

We don’t have any hardware available to us that can come close to that level of auditory or electrical signal fine analysis.

@atdavid 

"What he said!"

If you're brave enough to try one of these, they DO offer improvement for a bargain .
https://www.mapleshaderecords.com/audioproducts/powercord_prev.php

I used one one for years without  worry. It looks like a disaster ready to happen, but if you have a child/pet free environment, it works. Naturally YMMV.

Reality, if there were problems with this cord, I would think Pierre would have taken it off the site years ago.

The clear,candy wrapper insulation was getting beat up, and the scotch tape repairs became too much.

Speaking with a Mapleshade guy years ago, he said Pierre prefers them WITHOUT the insulation! Now that's freakin manly!!

Disclaimer:. Not affiliated with... or compensated by manufacturer... but the following gives a basic explanation how cables can affect sound.

FWIW...

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/whatwiredoes.htm

Now... as another example, (on a smaller scale), let’s look at phono cartridge tweaking. Most phono preamps have/allow for changing capacitors and resistors... either manually or by knobs/switches...
that affect the frequency response of the cartridge.

Using the same basic understanding and principals... some companies may use different gauges of wire... different dialectric insulators... different metals... and different sheilding, to manipulate electrons of a power cord, (or interconnect or speaker cable), to a sound that they prefer.

Some individuals will prefer this "house sound" , while others won’t... and even others won’t hear a difference due to ear shape, or ear damage.

While I have no foundational argument for what I am about to say... I might even suggest that using the above mentioned methods might even cause a phase shift... with the end result requiring a speaker placement change.

And no... I’m not smoking or drinking anything. Just a theory based on subtle changes and experimentation with my setup.