Power Cables

Yeah I was wondering WTF as the bass just disappeared.
And I still don't have clue how that could even happen, from an ac power cable no less.

JJ

 

Let's not exaggerate. Cumulative data corruption is a pernicious problem, but it's hardly "constantly" happening. If it were, system crashes and lost data would be commonplace.

In the context of audio, you are looking at one flipped bit in one sample. Even if it is the most significant bit, it will hardly be audible. Certainly not to the point that it causes and audible change in sound signature.

 

There is a 'complimentary' perspective to consider as well.

That 6' power cable is the 1st portion of the 'outreach' of the device that receives ac power.
Our gear generates noise in multiple ways (diode bridges, crystal clocks, switching circuits etc.) and ALL of these are directly tied into or referenced by the ground 'plane' of the device.
And this ground is tied together back at the panel into the neutral that feeds all branch circuits from that panel.

So the more that our 6' ac power cable can reduce the noise that feeds back into the power distribution system, the less all other branch circuits will also be affected.

In addition the ground plane itself is and has a direct connection to ALL digital IC's, the power supply, and most of the analog circuits as well.
So by lowering the noise on the ground and neutral circuits the less noise our sensitive circuits have to deal with.

I have been experimenting with devices that act as ground voltage noise 'sponges' and the results are quite desirable, at least in my and others systems that have used these devices.

But what gets me the most is that cable changes result in what I would term as tube like euphonic coloration's.
And this applies to both analog and digital cables.

For instance last night a friend was over and listened to my system.
I first had him listen to the digital path from my Mac to dac directly via an optical cable.
Then I switched back to my USB feed via a Wyrd and tweaked cables.

He immediately noticed the difference and chose the USB data path as 'Better'.

Perhaps some audio systems are immune to these types of influences, but mine and others I know of, are not.
So just be thankful that your system is immune, since it is less costly to need or have to deal with this level of fussing with the knobs.

Lastly, once these 'choke points' were ameliorated, the overall SQ took a mother may I step up, and often went WAY up.

Just like I like.

JJ

 

I think JJ has addressed my point here, that it depends on your system, how sensitive it is. And yes, expensive cable can sound bad, so bad. Try add two siltech in your system, the flavor will sound like a pain in the a**.

For those who doesn't believe in cables, please don't try to convince others with "rocket science" while it is not. Did you try it yourself/do the experiments you brought up by yourself, with what kind of setup, quiet environment? All I want to say is to keep your minds open, try it yourself before the whole lecturing others thing gets stared.

As simple as it is, if you can here the improve in your system, add that as an option when upgrade your system. Otherwise save the money for other parts, that would be well spent.

 

And let me repeat one last aspect here that I have mentioned before.

Often in un-tweaked systems there are a few major choke points that will obscure the more subtle changes, such as power cables, fuses and other such tweaks.

So if a major veil is in place (and often veils only become known AFTER they are removed) and it's messing with the delivery of the re-created signal, it will act as a limitation and do so in such a way that until they are dealt with, most all other changes will be 'hidden' or obscured.
IOW you won't hear any differences by swapping out say a power cable, because whatever changes are being made are much more heavily masked by other more intrusive 'choke points'.

For me it was a combination of an 'audio grade' duplex receptacle and a 'robust' ac power cable kit from a $1.29 duplex receptacle and ¢99 power cable as supplied by most manufacturers.
Other systems will have other major choke points such as lack of ground (ungrounded power delivery) or noisy power and ground (poor power distribution) or severely limited power delivery (which is what the ASCC tests will reveal), not to mention cheap 99¢ power cables or 79¢ interconnects etc.

If you are not hindered by such things, then count your blessings and your wallet will thank you.

But there is a preponderance of evidence that many others HAVE benefited by careful attention to such details and are quite satisfied by the end results, and I am one of them.

JJ

 

I try not to be anal, so I just stick the male end into the hole. It's pretty satisfying, even with the low quality rubber.

In regards to power cables though..

 

Speaking as a rocket scientist... for the kind of money that boutique power cords go for, you're much better off sticking a Tripp-Lite or Furman box up front instead. Y'know, the stuff that *actually* filters.

 

And in some cases yes they will help.

But again they too use the ground as a reference upon which they 'stand' and operate from.
Which means they can only filter out noise based upon the preexisting noise already on the ground as the starting point.

And being a 'filter' means they can only reduce, not eliminate, noise, but not on or from the ground itself, which as I noted above has a direct path to ALL IC's in our dacs and most amps etc.

This is why I have an interest in what electrical conditions exist on the ground and what can done to 'clean it up' in the first place.

It is an interesting situation all the way around.

JJ

 

No thanks. People keep coming along trying to put things in it if I do that.

I think it's about time we all admitted that the ability to hear these things has nothing to do with some mysterious system "susceptibility" and everything to do with the ideology of the individual. People will fail to hear what they don't want to hear, and yes, they can hear what isn't there, too.

And with all due respect, telling me to "try it" is disingenuous. If I do try it and hear no difference, then it's a flaw of my ear/music/system, not the original premise. Of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

 

I need this made into a sticker I can slap onto the foreheads of people trying to push this kind of stuff. Apparently refusing something that the person proposing it takes absolutely no measure in trying to actually justify or explain the reasoning behind it, makes you closed-minded.

If it were as easy as simply giving anecdotes, I'd probably have 500 Bowflexes and Ab-King Pros in my basement.

 

There is another possibility in the 'ability' to hear the differences, as well.

A few years back during a RMAF technical talk, the head of research(?) for ESS (the dac chip manfac.) stated, on camera in front of the entire assembled crowd that he couldn't hear just what most of 'us' were talking about.
AND they had to take their latest designs to the guy in the company who could hear these subtle differences for evaluation and feed back etc.
I think I saved the link to the video if someone wants to watch it…

IOW some folks, just, may not, be able to hear these differences, in the first place.
I don't know if this is just a lack, of 'training', or conscious focus upon the music itself, or what, but it just may be that some just plain Can't Hear these subtle but oh so obvious to those who have experienced them, changes of and to the acoustical presentation.

Or put another way…
The assumption that we all hear the same as the guy next to us does, just might not be a valid assumption.
And really we already know this, but this expands the 'limits' of the range of difference between us, and by quite a bit.

Fortunately listening to music does not require this distinction to be in evidence, because music as a direct connection to our emotions.

But for those of us who have heard these aspects, to be told they are, in so many words, a fiction of our mind, are missing the point.
That being, we DO hear them, and that some can't, or don't, or haven't yet, has no bearing upon these treasured experiences.
Because once you do experience them there is no denying them nor does it make any difference, any more, how, or why, or what the explanation is…
All that truly matters is hearing more of it.

JJ

 

Golden ears argument is one of the oldest audiophile exclusive tactics that really grinds my gears. We can hear subtle differences in headphones, amps and even dacs - the difference between power cables shouldn't fall into a category that can only be heard by some. The salesmen from synergeatic reasearch have to believe what they are selling makes a difference, even if 95% of the world laugjs at them. Why can't I see the emporers new cloths? I'm not worthy?

JJ, you're an awesome dude and hope you are no getting too frustrated with this discourse. You've peaked my curiosity in the potential of a impact, even if I remain highly skeptical. I purchased some $15 Amazon hospital grade cords that were recommended earlier (thought they looked cool) and own a PS audio powerwave that was included in a massdrop purchase of a sprout, size of a garden hose and I previously thought it made no difference.

I will bite and try this test out, but i am biased against hearing a difference. What should I try and listen for, improved bass? Increased clarity?

 

I have no idea.
I can only speak for myself and present others observations.

What you choose to do with any of this is your choice to make.
So I have no idea what you hear, or listen for, or what any other sonic parameters you have come to use as your tools to listen with.
Just as you don't know mine.

It's quite simple, to me anyway.

I hear what I hear and notice patterns and subtle changes when I fuss with my setup.
I have been doing this for decades and as such have come to see patterns and shifts and changes in the acoustic presentation and have categorized them.
And again to me doing this for so long I also can 'know' what is better, for me, because I listen, a lot, constantly, every day.
And I play around with lots of different parameters, all the time, and all the while keeping notes as things change.

And I DO hear differences, some of which I like and keep, and some of which I discard or further modify based upon my options etc.

That anyone doesn't experience what I do shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, like I said we all hear differently.
And so I don't expect anyone else to hear what I do and if there is confirmation, so much the better.

Lastly I'm reminded of the saying,
"You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time."

I'll leave it up each to apply it as is your wont to do so.


JJ

 

If you can't explain what's different, maybe it's all in your mind. I find it disturbing that you think power cords are more likely to be making a difference than expectation bias. Expectation bias is proven scientifically, in countless studies. Cables are disproved scientifically in multiple studies.

I am going to flat out say it: You are imagining these differences, plain and simple.

 

I just find it funny that power cables can't make a difference, but same people arguing that might happily hear things in dacs, power supplies and whatnot. Do people actually double blind these too as all the measurements are way below hearability?

 

I guess there's certain products that have been double blinded often, such as power cables. On the other hand, DACs and Amps seem to be a bit iffier in terms of the double blind results. On the one hand you have results such as Big Sound which demonstrated amp differences, on the other hand some of the old speaker amp double blind tests showed no difference.

I actually felt more strongly from personal experience that DACs cause a bigger difference than amps. However, this is very likely expectation bias, so I don't put much stock in my own experiences necessarily.

 

Some CPUs do have ECC cache. However, most consumer-grade parts do not and therefore do NOT "throw away" corrupted data. They consume it and either nothing noticeable happens or there is a glitch/crash. Which brings us back to my point that bit errors are relatively infrequent; otherwise computers would be barely usable.

So, the issue that I have with this is that all audio reproduction falls short of the original sound to some degree. Between the audio the comes out of my headphones and the original sound is some finite continuum. Additionally, human hearing ability is necessarily finite as well.

If the difference imparted by something like a cable is so subtle that only certain people can hear it, we're talking about either an inconsequential fraction of this finite difference, or else just a different flavor of the sound; variations on a theme if you will. This is all assuming that there are differences to hear.

Maybe I'm very wrong with this line of reasoning. But what I'm getting at is that the whole goldenear audiophile thing is not about getting that "final" 1%, as it's often framed; it's about getting an additional 1%. At which point things like cables or putting your amp on a granite slab is more about running in place than making the touchdown.

So yes, people who can hear these differences certainly do have more acute hearing than the rest of us, but the rest of us are not missing anything significant. Or not; obviously I can't know for sure.

 

I found to quote part of people's post and draw the attention to the other side is VERY misleading and somewhat disrespectful. Like I said before in my first post here, you may not hear a different if your system is so damn good. I tried a power cable on a CSE power center and PS regenerator, those improvements I heard was gone, because the power is already steady and clean and the cable won't make a noticeable difference.

When talks about cable can make a difference,susceptibility/ideology is the word that's usually brought up. So are you confident to say that after days and weeks of listening people still hear what he/she wants to hear?? IMO that's impossible, that would be idio hypnotism. There are people who can hear the difference, that's the fact, and it's irresponsible to just call it ideology.

I didn't and won't recommend everyone to spend much money on power cables, and even all cables. Nor did I wanna convince those who don't believe in it. My intention is to encourage those who haven't tried it to try it. It's a good thing to save that money, and make it somewhere else if it could make a bigger difference. But that difference should be something that you can tell, not from other people's telling you should be or shouldn't be there. And the part of my post you quoted is just a halfway of my conclusion:

As simple as it is, if you can here the improve in your system, add that as an option when upgrade your system. Otherwise save the money for other parts, that would be well spent.

Just one last thing, by following your logic, hearing the difference would be ideology, cannot hear the difference is no evidence. Bravo.