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In Reply to: How is it that power cords can make a sonic difference??? posted by KeithA on September 15, 2003 at 18:32:31:
A few months ago, someone brought up power cords on a forum I moderate elsewhere. The usual "snake oil" type posts came up and the thread died. Recently, there have been a couple of similar threads wherein people whose opinions I trust posted of their positive experiences with power cords. It piqued my interest, but, to be honest, I went in completely convinced that no positive change could result. As I said before, when I got my cords, the improvement was readily observable. I almost fought against hearing what I was hearing, but it was and is there. Next, an explanation and as I'm more of an audio enthusiast than an engineer, I came here, where I hoped to find an answer. I've taken back some of the information I've received from you gentlemen and added it to the thread (with due credit to the authors here). I will bookmark this thread for those times when I hear bashing on other boards, usually by people who've never used aftermarket cords. I just get tired of people knocking something they haven't even tried, as well as the pat responses you've all, I'm sure, heard such as "The electricity travels miles and miles before it reaches your house. A couple of feet aren't going to make any difference."
Follow Ups:
"The electricity travels miles and miles before it reaches your house. A couple of feet aren't going to make any difference." RFI is not a myth it is real just because you cannot see it. the proof is in the sound on the mains if you remove this you get better results and if you a better dielectric and metal etc.
Here is a bit from cable theory from AQ
We all like to describe how a good component improves the performance of our system, a perfectly legitimate comment. Unfortunately, buried in this statement is often the misunderstanding that the better component actually improved the signal in some way. There are certain areas of digital processing where this is possible, but in the analog world signals don't get better, they only get worse. The substitution of a superior component improves a system only because it causes less damage.Cables, like all components, should be chosen because they do the least damage. This "damage" comes in two basic forms: a relatively benign loss of information, or a change to the character. A visual analogy might illustrate this distinction: consider "perfect" as a totally clear pane of glass. Since no component is perfect, the best we can strive for would be analogous to a pane of glass with a light gray tint. Lower quality components would have a darker gray tint. These various densities of gray tint would represent various amounts of lost information.
If the glass were tinted green or yellow or red, these colors would represent changes in character. We are far more likely to notice, and be bothered by, a light colored tint than a denser gray tint. It is this mechanism of character versus quantity that causes much of the confusion in the pursuit of higher performance.
Chain Analogies, Synergy, Enhancement and Other Lies
We have all heard the truism that "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. "Certainly this is true of a chain, but it becomes a misleading lie when applied to the world of audio and video. The quality of sound coming from your speakers and the quality of picture from your video monitor have both been compromised by some degree of distortion in every component, starting with the microphone or camera. No one actually believes that if you changed every piece of equipment except the proclaimed "weak link"-that there would not be any change in the sound or the picture. No matter how bad a CD player might be, no one would argue that you couldn't hear the difference if you changed speakers. It is worth noting that some components are more cost-effective to change than others, or that a particular complaint will not be eliminated until a specific component has been changed. These truths might seem like an approximation of the chain analogy but the chain story has so much strength because it is an absolute, and it absolutely doesn't apply.The logic of a good system is very simple: Every component matters! The electronics, the speakers, the cables, even every solder joint, all cause damage. Each component is like one of the dirty panes of glass in this illustration. Each one blocks a bit of the view. The quality of the final performance, or the clarity of the view, is the original signal minus the damage done by all the pieces in-between. Improving any one of the components will improve the performance. Cleaning any one of the glass panes will allow a clearer view.
Recognizing that the challenge is to reduce negatives, to prevent distortion, makes it much easier to understand "unexplainable" improvements. If the panes of glass are not only dirty, but also have a red tint, then as each pane is cleaned and the tint is eliminated, the "view" of the music will improve as expected. However, the red, and the awareness of the red, will not be eliminated until the last pane has been de-tinted.
De-tinting this last pane will seem to make a bigger difference than de-tinting any of the previous panes. We are naturally more impressed by the elimination of the red tint than by the previous reduction in the tint's density. If you didn't want to hear traffic on the street, reducing the traffic from three cars per minute to none at all would be more impressive than reducing the flow from nine per minute to six. People are more sensitive to the presence of a phenomenon (the red or the cars) than to the quantity.
nt
_____________________________"But this is the plastic age,
the quiet rage
is damned and civilized."
I'm a moderator on Club Rotel at HTGuide.com.
I went to your site and saw that in the thread about this topic, posts from AA had been cut and pasted rather than linked to. Besides violating the copyright policy at AA, and failing to give adequate credit to the individuals who contributed the information, I think it does a disservice to the readership of HTGuide, who might potentially wander over here and find out a number of interesting things about audio reproduction that hadn't occurred to them before, then post their findings back to HTGuide, which sends more people over here, who tell more people at HTGuide, and so on. Cross-pollination, if you will. Personally, I found out about AA from a Jon Risch post at Audio Review, and I've benefitted greatly from it.Just a thought.
_____________________________"But this is the plastic age,
the quiet rage
is damned and civilized."
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