The Stock Power Cord Fan Club

[markw]

He points to Floyd Toole and saying there is no more sensitive instrument than the human ears and yes, Mr. Toole is a proponent of blind testing for speaker design, and area where he excels.

I don't see him venturing into the area of power cable theory but, being a man of tremendous intellect and common sense, I could see him in taking a stance for them where blind testing would have some merit.

Unless, of course, these power cable proponents are afraid that their eyes would be proven to be more truthful than their ever so worshiped beliefs and ears.

At this time, I'm all for voting him off the island. He's becoming tedious and, as of late, more aggressive since nobody is buying what he's selling. Besides, it's getting tiring cleaning up after his dogma.

 

[markw]

Jokes aside, I see your point, but you can't blame folks for following the math.
I think that people that follow only the math get paralysis through analysis.

If you like expensive power cords, go for it.
I prefer high value cords. If my system costs $1500 I better hear at least a 10% improvement if I spend $100 on a cord. This is why I like a Risk Free audition period. If I don't get good value I send it back.
Please stay away from cheese graters

10% improvemnt? That would definitely be instantly audible.

Now, I've flipped amps, CD/SACD players and the like and can't ever say I've found an improvement that would be considered that audible as to be described as your 10%.

You do like throwing useless number around to try to impress the gullible, don't you.

 

[rojo]

What the hell are these velvet covered uranium power cords claimed to do, anyway? Do they randomize the AC cycles so the receiver acts surprised?

Anyone who wants a 10% improvement should spend their money on better speakers. Not electronics, and certainly not accessories for those electronics! Maybe I should start selling universal remotes and claiming that they improve the sparkle factor by 12%.

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[TLS Guy]

He points to Floyd Toole and saying there is no more sensitive instrument than the human ears and yes, Mr. Toole is a proponent of blind testing for speaker design, and area where he excels.

I don't see him venturing into the area of power cable theory but, being a man of tremendous intellect and common sense, I could see him in taking a stance for them where blind testing would have some merit.

Unless, of course, these power cable proponents are afraid that their eyes and beliefs would be proven to be more truthful than their ever so worshiped ears alone.

At this time, I'm all for voting him off the island. He's becoming tedious and, as of late, more aggressive since nobody is buying what he's selling.

Yes, these scam artists always fall back on the tired argument that your ears are better then test gear. That is totally BS. Instruments can measure effects that the human ear could never differentiate.

This sort of nonsense has been around a long time now. Back in 1969 when Peter first introduced solid state amps, this argument went rampant about the inferiority of solid state amps.

So Peter recruited a panel of well known self appointed "Golden Eared" experts for a double blind study. Well they could not tell the difference between solid state and tube.

However, naughtily the panel did not know that Peter had introduced amps in the test, with progressively higher THD. The "Golden Ears" did not achieve statistical significance until 2% THD.

They never forgave him for that, and set about trashing his amps, claiming his amps were so lousy, they could not tell the difference.

You never win with this crowd.

 

[slipperybidness]

Repost from previous thread, just because witchdoctor refuses to accept the challenge to logically argue against any of these points

It is completely 100% absurd to suggest that 3 feet of fancy Pangea or any other power cable could possibly make any audible IMPROVEMENT over a stock cable (assuming that the stock cable is of proper AWG for the task and is of decent construction). Sure, it COULD sound DIFFERENT, but not IMPROVED as far as carrying an electrical signal is concerned. It's physics, and the laws of physics are pretty tough to bend or break

If you have a modern home, the wires from your power panel to your wall outlet are almost certainly run-of-the-mill Romex, probably 50 feet or more. So, for anyone that has a lick of sense, it would be obvious that you would also need to change out the Romex to the fancy wires to even maybe think about an improvement. Why stop there? Fancy wires back to the sub-station and back to the turbine, if you really want that audio nirvana that you have been missing.

Next, what wires do you think are on the other end, internal to the AV gear? I can promise you that the windings on that power transformer are nothing fancy.....you better go ahead and re-wire the primaries of your power transformer with that fancy wire. The funny thing is, the primaries and the power cord aren't even part of the circuit!!! Seriously, the primaries simply throw off the EM field that is picked up by the secondaries!

But wait, the secondaries on the power transformer are also plain Jane wires. Dang, now you need to re-wire all the coils on your PT---I sure hope you have a torroid and not an EI (good luck rewiring that).

After the PT, you hit the rectifier diodes, then the caps, and at that point you are talking about PCB traces and you ain't re-wiring those. Hmmm. caps....FILTER caps.....I wonder what those do?

Here's an idea for the witchdoctor: Spend your $ on measurement gear instead of wasting it on fancy cables, then you could measure the difference (that doesn't exist).

When witchdoctor or anyone else claims these "night and day" differences between cables, they are 100% human biased and fooling themselves with this bias. Plain and simple.

I use that same rationale on myself: I am human, I am biased, I don't hear any difference between plain jane and fancy cables. I don't have to listen because there are absolutely no measurement differences and absolutely no improvements to be had. If I wanted to remove my bias, we would have to be talking about DBT.

I don't care about this enough for DBT. My time and my $ are more valuable to me than to try to change the mind of a biased troll.

However, I would hope that newbies looking for advice and honest improvements will see the logic presented here and spend their $ wisely!

 

[slipperybidness]

However, naughtily the panel did not know that Peter had introduced amps in the test, with progressively higher THD. The "Golden Ears" did not achieve statistical significance until 2% THD.
.

LOL!!!

That is awesome. Classic approach, get a group together and tell them it's to test out "item A", but in reality you are testing out "item B".

Now, that is a great human/social experiment.

 

[Adam]

I say forget about power cords when you can spruce up that digital signal with this value-packed beauty.

I love the description. It's like even they were wondering how in the heck to market that thing.

 

[Swerd]

So Peter recruited a panel of well known self appointed "Golden Eared" experts for a double blind study. Well they could not tell the difference between solid state and tube.

However, naughtily the panel did not know that Peter had introduced amps in the test, with progressively higher THD. The "Golden Ears" did not achieve statistical significance until 2% THD.

They never forgave him for that, and set about trashing his amps, claiming his amps were so lousy, they could not tell the difference.

I love that story! An experiment is only as good as the controls done at the same time. I've always wanted to see that done for a blind listening test for audio.

Most people get what a negative control is. In this case, the responses of the panel were tested when two identical amps were compared. It determined how many times the panel members say "yes I hear a difference" when none existed. The answer is not zero, and it can and should be measured. It provides a sense of how large is the false-positive error rate under the test conditions.

Similarly, a positive control should be done. It determines how many times the panel members say "no I don't hear a difference" when it really exists. This was the tests of amps with the progressively higher THD. It clearly established that the panel members could not reliably hear different levels of THD less than 2%.

After that, it became easy to compare the panel results from the positive controls to the results when they listened to the solid state amps vs. the tube amps. Under conditions where they could hear 2% or more THD, they could not hear the difference between solid state and tube amps. Without these type of positive controls, the experiment would have been less meaningful.

So it wasn't naughty or deceptive for Peter Walker to do that, it was good science.

 

[avliner]

I thought cables didn't matter,so I tried running my system without them. Guess what?? Huge difference!

 

[KEW]

I have a couple of high dollar AC cords that were thrown in with a pair of used Outlaw M200 amps I bought. The guy who gave them to me obviously didn't think they made his system sound better, but I figured I might as well let my own ears be the judge. I tried them and swapped them around and heard no difference.

However, I did detect a practical difference. The high dollar cables required at least 12" behind my amps to allow the cord to curve without straining the plug or cord.
Consequently, I thought briefly about moving my gear out into the room onto marble slabs with stainless shoes/spikes and ceramic cable lifts to eliminate emf interference from the nails in my hardwood flooring. But then, "Pretty Butterfly!" (and the moment was gone)

 

[Swerd]

However, I did detect a practical difference. The high dollar cables required at least 12" behind my amps to allow the cord to curve without straining the plug or cord.

Consequently, I thought briefly about moving my gear out into the room onto marble slabs with stainless shoes/spikes and ceramic cable lifts to eliminate emf interference from the nails in my hardwood flooring. But then, "Pretty Butterfly!" (and the moment was gone)

Replace all those magnetic steel nails with copper/beryllium nails .

Of course, the clever DIY audiophile would simply reverse the polarity of every other steel nail, and presto, balanced flooring fasteners .

 

[shadyJ]

Only the highly ignorant or raving lunatics would give a passing thought to your advice.

As both highly ignorant and a raving lunatic, I take offense to your suggestion that I would give a passing thought to this rubbish! I demand an apology!