Monstrous power cables

Pfffttt, listen to the music not your gear, period.

@audiodwebe , the power cords on your dacs are supposed to be different, meaning if you have already choosen the ones that are best sounding for the gear you are using.

More often than not, the ’wrong’ power cord will change the way some piece of gear sounds and even more if  that piece of gear is new to you, it may lead you to ’wrong’ conclusion.

I guess the best advice how to try something new, is to leave it in your system for some time and than after some period to change it with piece of gear you wish to compare it with (cord, or dac, or whatever)

It happened to me more than once, A-B changes,sometimes I could not tell the difference, or it was very subtle.Lets say, after a week (or two weeks for both things I wished to try) of listening, I could decide without a doubt which piece of gear fits more to my perceived reference of sound reproduction.

If you are honest with yourself (and why you should not be) the blind is not important, imho.

Recently read a good thought about blind testing written by Mike Lavigne, as he challenged anyone to assemble great sounding system by picking components by blind listening, vs his way with ’open eyes’....it was a joke, but he has a point

Thanks for all your suggestions.  I do appreciate them all.

Normally (like 95% of the time), when I compare a new component I’ll put it into my system for an extended period of time.  The only times it’ll come out quickly is if it bothers me and makes listening to music not enjoyable.  Those instances are pretty rare, however.  
 

With the recent comparisons, I wanted to be able to do a quick side by side test.  The reason:  I’d recently picked up three different streamers and DACs to test out and, as I don’t want to keep them all, wanted to figure out which one to let go.

First, I listened to the Stack streamer with the Denafrips Aries II combo for many weeks.  I thought the rig sounded great.

I then swapped to the Lumin U1 Mini with Benchmark DAC3.  I was, and still am, having trouble getting the Lumin to play nicely with Roon.  It keeps either stopping or getting jammed to the point I have to restart it.  Kind of a PITA.  It plays fine with the Lumin app but I haven’t figured out how to inport my ripped library which is also a pain.

The sound, though, has been quite impressive.  I enjoy this combo better than the previous one, though not by much.  This rig seems to extract a bit more info from the recordings.  And I had been listening to this rig for a couple of weeks, as well.

The reason I put the PSA back into my setup to directly compare the two was because I had finished taking fotos of the PSA unit, got the box from the crawl space, and was going to list it for sale.  But just for fun, and before bidding adieu, I thought I do the direct comparison.

And now I’m not so sure which I prefer.  Since I’m in no hurry I’ll probably listen to the two for a while.

For a fairly recent A/B experience, I have a Maverick Audio TubeMagic D2 DAC that has parallel solid state and tube buffer outputs.  I had listened to both regularly and formed a strong enough preference for the solid state output that I didn't even both having interconnects hooked up to the tube buffer output.  In the process of upgrading, I purchased a Schiit Modi Multibit DAC and found it quite enjoyable.  After several weeks of listening I had the idea to compare it to the tube buffer output on my MA DAC and oddly enough found them indistinguishable to my ear.  I can only attribute temporary preference for the Schiit Modi Multibit DAC to confirmation bias/placebo.  I also have a Pioneer Elite SACD player that was indistinguishable from the solid state output on my MA DAC.  I found some information on upgrading the MA DAC, so upgraded the tube (Western Electric 396A) and three op amps (Sparkos Labs) and now strongly prefer the tube buffer output and find it far superior to my SACD player.  Now that I have an upgraded interconnect on my DAC I don't even bother using the SACD player anymore as it's simply disappointing in a way that makes any A/B comparison a waste of time.

If time and money were no object, I have have two identical pieces of everything so that I could always compare A/B with only a single piece of gear changing.  I'd confirm that I couldn't tell any difference with the dual setup and then swap a single item and compare and see if I could distinguish a difference.  It would be fun, but totally impractical.

I read on a forum somewhere a great quote that if an audiophile can see a difference they will hear a difference and I think there's some truth to that though I don't discount that with enough time and effort some people will be able to distinguish things that are far more subtle than most of us can.

I am waiting for my Shunyata Everest 8000 power conditioner to arrive and I must say that it was the third most expensive component in my system.  Additionally, each  power cable cost as much as my phono preamp, a Sutherland 20/20 with LPS.  My sales associate has been spot on with his advice, so I ordered these, but knowing that I have 60 days to return everything.  So far, adding subwoofers and acoustically treating my mid sized listening room have made for the largest improvement to date.  Today, a Shunyata Sigma NR cable arrive, so I replaced my McIntosh MA12000's power cable and plugged the Sigma into the wall.  I am totally at a loss to explain how the music sounded like a veil was removed.  It was at the level of treating the room.  I previously believed that power cables contributed little to the systems presentation and that the power amps were the last place to upgrade power cords.  I was wrong.