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[Poll] A poll on whether Power Cords make a difference

Do Power Cords Make A Difference?

  • Yes they do make a difference

    Votes: 145 39.8%
  • No they don't make a difference

    Votes: 166 45.6%
  • I don't know

    Votes: 53 14.6%

  • Total voters
    364
I assume you were questioning my comment about "reasonable to doubt".

My point isn't that you presume they are liars or fools and must be wrong. It is that when someone states something that is contrary to your own experience it is reasonable to wonder if they are mistaken. This not the same as taking for granted they are wrong. People do make mistakes.

I was questioning the assumption that RF might be responsible for the reported hearing of differences. 40% of those that have responded to this poll are hearing differences (or think they could). Does this square with the likely proportion that are having genuine RF mains problems? It would seem reasonable to assume that the reason such a large number of audiophiles are hearing differences between mains cables must lie elsewhere.
 
Can any of you guys explain how a mains cable can improve the sound, I am guessing much the same way as HDMI etc.

I doubt even the truest true believers believe that a cable can "improve" the sound. A more accurate representation would be to say that all cables degrade the sound, and some people are trying to find cables with less degradation.
 
4can I ask why my picture quality improved on the TV ? Before I bought the cable I tried it at home first.
God knows but it would appear that Sony's most expensive Post Production monitor-a serious precision instrument, uses a standard lead.
 
I doubt even the truest true believers believe that a cable can "improve" the sound. A more accurate representation would be to say that all cables degrade the sound, and some people are trying to find cables with less degradation.
Generally audiophiles describe improvements to the sound. The most accurate statement is likely to be more along the lines that all competent mains cables being used with competent hardware are audibly neutral. If a mains cable either improves or degrades the sound then something odd is going on either with the hardware or the listener.
 
Maybe we could politely ask those pondering dark energy (made up name for something not yet understood by the scientific community for the speeding up of the universe) to take 5 minutes to explain the phenomenon of mains cables.

Apparently, the only way to explain dark energy, as yet, is to dismiss Einstein`s theory of general relativity, something which can be measured precisely & matches perfectly with our view of the known universe, yet it has to be wrong for the universe to be expanding, we need another Einstein to make this happen of course, which could take an eternity, so I imagine proving a different mains cable has an impact on a certain piece of hifi equipment is way down the list of things to do.
 
Maybe we could politely ask those pondering dark energy (made up name for something not yet understood by the scientific community for the speeding up of the universe) to take 5 minutes to explain the phenomenon of mains cables.

Apparently, the only way to explain dark energy, as yet, is to dismiss Einstein`s theory of general relativity, something which can be measured precisely & matches perfectly with our view of the known universe, yet it has to be wrong for the universe to be expanding, we need another Einstein to make this happen of course, which could take an eternity, so I imagine proving a different mains cable has an impact on a certain piece of hifi equipment is way down the list of things to do.

The isotropic expansion of the Universe is not a 'given'. The Copernican principle is probably incorrect. Studies of the local Galactic Disk show no evidence for non-Newtonian dynamics, General Relativity has a number of issues including generation of singularities, no preferred notion of Time line (needs to be manually defined) and cannot be quantised. "Shape Dynamics" looks much more exciting.

And non of this has anything to do with cables.
 
While the government has been changing we have 130 Yesers that is 40%. I hope the OP draws pleasure from this and sits on the hostility he has been experiencing.
 
Again, Bill Low, CEO of Audioquest, has admitted that a marketing video for Audioquest HDMI cables was doctored in such a way as to deceive customers into thinking Audioquest HDMI cables made a real sonic difference. We know that a major Audioquest store and an Audioquest employee (their sales manager for the south-western USA) were involved in the making of the video. So, a clear admission of collusion between manufacturers and stores to 'delude' (as you put it) customers.

I agree this doesn't tick all three of duckworp's boxes (manufacturers, stores, journalists), but two out of three is pretty good. And it's also worth noting that the person who originally broke this story, Mark Waldrep, was subsequently attacked several times in the audiophile press. Shoot the messenger.

This post needs citation/links otherwise it is potentially libellous as I see it. Please fix or I’ll have to delete and prune.
 
While the government has been changing we have 130 Yesers that is 40%. I hope the OP draws pleasure from this and sits on the hostility he has been experiencing.
OP does this 129 plus yourself,40%, bring a positive sense to you? there will be others on AoS and TaS who would increase the yes population. If hearing mains cables were important to me I would be building a yippee.

Will you be asking the question outside the known HiFi community?
 
I was questioning the assumption that RF might be responsible for the reported hearing of differences. 40% of those that have responded to this poll are hearing differences (or think they could). Does this square with the likely proportion that are having genuine RF mains problems? It would seem reasonable to assume that the reason such a large number of audiophiles are hearing differences between mains cables must lie elsewhere.

One question them becomes: What might be the real physical 'cause' of the way a mains cable can affect what is heard if it is *not* "RF problems"? I agree, it may be something else, and that something else may also vary from situation to situation. But that leads to the question I pose before anyone can go further down that track. At least the theory I put forwards is based on established knowledge (behaviour of transmission lines, etc) and squares nicely with what cable makers say they do, and the variability of outcomes.

That said, I have not seen anyone survey the levels, etc, of RF interference on home mains cables. However given the modern proliferation of 'powerline home networks', cheap switch-mode PSUs, etc, I'd guess you could find RF pulses, etc, on the wall sockets of many homes. Chances are, this will spread from one home to others nearby. Note that these days even many 'light bulbs' have cheap-as-paper switchmoder supplies in them, built in a shed somewhere on the other side of the planet. Ask radio enthusiasts ask what kind of fog of RF this all throws up and they can probably give you some idea if you can bear to hear the length of their complaints! :)

To go further, someone would need to do a survey by suitable measurement and see if it correlates with the way people do or do not hear such audible differences. Plus actually test and report on how easily a given amp, etc, lets mains RF in an affects its output. Sadly, reviews don't seem to care about such issues, so we lack data.
 
The isotropic expansion of the Universe is not a 'given'. The Copernican principle is probably incorrect. Studies of the local Galactic Disk show no evidence for non-Newtonian dynamics, General Relativity has a number of issues including generation of singularities, no preferred notion of Time line (needs to be manually defined) and cannot be quantised. "Shape Dynamics" looks much more exciting.

And non of this has anything to do with cables.

According to current understanding (sic!): The large-scale structure of the Universe shows a pattern of threads of superclusters of galaxies separated by large voids where the higher 'potential' has allowed more time to elapse. Nothing like homogenious, but appoximately isotropic out to the era of observation of the background radiation.

Who knows, maybe this *does* have some effect on mains cables. 8-]
 
Seriously you weren’t following this story Tony? You might start here
http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=5540

Thanks. No, I wasn’t following it/hadn’t heard about it (I have very little intetest in audio outside the vintage/classic market these days). I just needed to cover pfm’s back, which the links above have done perfectly. I obviously need to be careful what I publish here.
 
I doubt even the truest true believers believe that a cable can "improve" the sound. A more accurate representation would be to say that all cables degrade the sound, and some people are trying to find cables with less degradation.

Degrading less is an improvement.

It applies to all aspects of HiFi.

It’s a lot more usual to say that, for example, an amplifier was an improvement than it would be to say that an amplifier degraded the sound less.
 


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