Power Cords Snake Oil ??

Agree with Eldartford - engineers & competent (& even some incompetent) designers fully understand the minute workings of power amps! The electronics, electricity & electro-magnetic concepts that are needed to design an amp are what I would consider basic in all 3 fields. YOU might not understand these concepts thoroughly for very good reasons & you might be extrapolating your lack of knowledge onto mankind! There is very little hi-tech in a power amp as it uses a lot of high power devices, the operation of which is very well understood. That's why ss power amps last a lifetime! Rowland's Model 201 use a new switching power supply module. It's new for audio but in use elsewhere (space exploaration, for eg.) for a long, long time. That type of power supply module is also very well understood! In fact improvements in power amps comes mostly from leaps in metalurgy (better hook-up wires, passive components, etc).

While I consider the statements about amplifiers being fully understood to be as absurd as statement as was ever made in the history of the world, the statement cannot be currently disproven.

As design continues to improve and the next big step is made we will all recognize that there was something about amps that maybe we did not firmly grasp.

That is as absurd as saying you know everything about your wife. People will never know everything about anything in this life!

Nrchy:
Right on target.

I got a couple amplifier design and construction books authored by G Randy Slone, Ive only browsed through them, and im no electrical engineer, but SS amplifier designs are not exactly complicated. It is all basic electronics.

Im sure that Quantum physics which has been accepted as fact, will have SOMETHING to do within the spectrum of electrical sciences, but basically you construct it and it works, and it is known why.
Im not sure i understand the relation of mystic and unknown powers of the universe that people keep trying to tag onto an amplifier, wire, or whatever else.

I understand the idea that a high end power cable might have some good filtering attributes from it, but i still think that this entire debate is somewhat useless because some people have better power being fed into thier homes than other people do.

Maybe if you have clean power and a good power cord you can hear a difference, or maybe you cannot. Maybe you can only hear a difference if you have crappy power.

Maybe they fact that some people hear differences depends on the magnetic fields in the earth. Who knows.

The fact is this, if two people buy a $400 power cable, one of them claims to hear a great difference in sound and the other claims to not hear anything different, i refuse to believe that one of them "Isnt hearing right" Personally i would be more to lean to puyt merit in the person who states he cannot hear any difference, because it DOES sound like the other guy is trying to justify an expence while the other guy chalks it off as a mistake.

The world of High Fidelity 2 channel audio is not exactly making leaps and bounds of technical advancements. It is more of different configurations, or slight modifications.

Seeing as how i have never used a high end power cord, i cannot totally discount thier sonic benefit.

There are 2 groups of people. Those who hear the differences and those who dont.

Maybe instead of claiming mystical forces, other factors should be looked at for explanation. It could be alot of different things and it could probably be explained if looked at the right way, and there is nothing as far as i see to indicate some strange mysterious things happening in the power cable itself.

I would look more at geographical location, look for electromagnetic lines (way lines)in the earth, look at the distance and quality of power and lines in the persons house, or how many people share that grid. Does your house have alot of metal in it? what is used for your main ground? will the equipment you are running actually even benefit from the power cord? Maybe some equipment does and some doesent.

seems like alot of finger pointing and name calling. Not much mutual interest in getting to the bottom of this mystery.

You might find that the altitude in colorado puts a system a little close to the electromagnetic shield and differences cannot be heared, while in florida they can.

who knows?

All this badgering and name calling isnt going to get to the bottom of this, and sometimes things work a certain way for resons beyond the component itself.

there is a practical explanation to everything, and i dont see the benefit to pass it along as faith in the unknown.

I would like to see what happens when the non believers hear a comparison in a believers house, and vica verca.

Sum it up, add it up, locate it and pin it. The answer is there, and it is nothing fantastic or beyong comprehension, it is something nobody thought to look at yet.

Maybe it's a semantic argument, but in a sense I agree with Nrchy that nothing is completely understood, but the current model of electro-magnetic behavior at non-relativistic speeds and non-absolute zero temps is quite comprehensive. As a scientific endeavor the design of audio spectrum amplifiers is trivial, roughly equivalent to designing a refrigerator.