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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
Can they still pick the cable without knowing it is inserted , there is no mechanism I am aware of where a power cable can increase volume, Jez,John?
Keith

There is no mechanism where any power lead can have any effect whatsoever, not even a microscopic one, under any circumstances other than a huge power amp being used at full power (we're talking kilowatt+ PA amps really here) being used with a long thin lead in which the simple resistance of the cable may mean it gives 980W instead of 1000W.

As two of us have just explained, the mains isn't even connected for over 90% of the time!

The fact that the foomeisters are so thick/pig headed as to ignore the fact that the cable between the plug socket and amp is just a continuation of god knows how many yards of the naffast twin and earth mains cable coming from the fuse box is probably the most amusing bit of course! Then there's the 30+ yards of thin enamel plated copper wire in the transformer.... with around say 10 Ohms resistance compared to around 0.05 Ohms of the mains cable... It's akin to arguing over which 100 ton rated tow rope is best capable of towing a Dinky car without stretching!
 
Then there's the 30+ yards of thin enamel plated copper wire in the transformer.... with around say 10 Ohms resistance compared to around 0.05 Ohms of the mains cable... It's akin to arguing over which 100 ton rated tow rope is best capable of towing a Dinky car without stretching!
It's amusing when someone who professes to know what they are talking about confuses the load with the supply! :D
 
Further to the excellent input from Arkless and John Phillips, might I add that if I am not mistaken, much kit also has an internal mains fuse which AIUI sits between the mains input and the PSU? Half an inch of very thin wire, with no poncy weave, bundling, plaiting, screening or anything else.. Just sayin'...
 
Further to the excellent input from Arkless and John Phillips, might I add that if I am not mistaken, much kit also has an internal mains fuse which AIUI sits between the mains input and the PSU? Half an inch of very thin wire, with no poncy weave, bundling, plaiting, screening or anything else.. Just sayin'...

Too short for "very thin wire, with no poncy weave, bundling, plaiting, screening or anything else" to even matter but it is resistance wire... it wouldn't work as a fuse otherwise, and so the fuse will have a resistance similar to or greater than a mains lead yes. Which is still far too low to have any effect.
We could of course mention the contacts of the IEC inlet, it's riveted together connections of often dissimilar metals, the on/off switch often built in to it, the push on crimped connectors coming from the inlet, the second lot of push on crimped connectors on the PCB, the bog standard wiring in between, possibly further wiring and connectors going to and from a front panel mains switch, sometimes another internal fuse with it's holder...

In the case of big SS power amps some have inrush current limiting using a thermistor... which really makes it interesting as even when up to temperature they will have a much larger resistance than the mains cable, fuse and all switch contacts etc combined!

Hmm... Any fule kno that you need real hi fi thermistors in your power amp and I happen to have some special ones freshly shat up by my dragon and blessed by priests from the Russ Andrews Temple of Enlightenment. Only £300 each! This time next year Rodney...:D
 
I wish they didn't. The world would make more sense if this foo shit didn't actually make some difference.
 
The world would make more sense if this foo shit didn't actually make some difference, as Father O'Reilly was saying just the other day.... FIFY:D
 
Anyone else wondering when MIT, NASA, ESA, Bell Labs, The Cavendish Labs, The National Physical Laboratory, Fermilab, CERN, research labs of Hitachi, Philips, Sony, Intel, the lockheed "skunk works" etc etc are finally going to catch up with a bloke called Dave in Milton Keynes with a Mana rack of Naim gear and a Russ Andrews catalog.....:D The Nobel Committee await you Dave... oops it was just the Buffs...
 
It seems to go along the following lines for many audiophools... "I know nothing about the electronics behind how hi fi works and I find it so mind boggling/boring that I don't want to know either/can't be bothered to learn.... So... I'll allow all my "opinions" to be formed by reading the opinions of peers who also know nothing about it and pick which ones seem, in the absence of any knowledge whatsoever, most plausible/most appealing/most popular, and then defend these "opinions" to the death"... in the same way a religious nut defends and believes in an invisible god who no one has ever even seen...

Actually, it seems to go along the following lines: "Years ago I attended a technical college where I learned some basic formulas for calculating resistance, inductance and stuff like that, learned how amplifiers worked and then spent the next 20 years soldering things for a living. So I am an expert on "science". I am not aware of any formulas from my technical college training which show why power cords/interconects/speaker cables/amplifiers/dacs [delete as appropriate] should sound different, so they don't. This would be against "science". Science involves applying the fixed and immutable formulas I learned in college and any observations or experimental results which contradict these are "foo". [Note: foo is bad.] Experimental results or evidence which cannot be explained by the established principles that I have learned in college must be "foo" because that is Science. I believe in my version of "science" and will defend this opinion to death in the way a religious nut defends and believes in an invisible god who no one has ever seen. I have never read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions and if I did I wouldn't understand it."
 
Actually, it seems to go along the following lines: "Years ago I attended a technical college where I learned some basic formulas for calculating resistance, inductance and stuff like that, learned how amplifiers worked and then spent the next 20 years soldering things for a living. So I am an expert on "science". I am not aware of any formulas from my technical college training which show why power cords/interconects/speaker cables/amplifiers/dacs [delete as appropriate] should sound different, so they don't. This would be against "science". Science involves applying the fixed and immutable formulas I learned in college and any observations or experimental results which contradict these are "foo". [Note: foo is bad.] Experimental results or evidence which cannot be explained by the established principles that I have learned in college must be "foo" because that is Science. I believe in my version of "science" and will defend this opinion to death in the way a religious nut defends and believes in an invisible god who no one has ever seen. I have never read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions and if I did I wouldn't understand it."

Nice try Dave! You and your ilk still don't know a resistor from a spark plug never mind your arse from your elbow though so even if i'd "merely" "learned some basic formulas for calculating resistance, inductance and stuff like that, learned how amplifiers worked" even that would make me an almost infinitely better judge of the subject than someone who knows zilch about "basic formulas for calculating resistance, inductance and stuff like that", and has no idea how amplifiers work, but got all enthusiastic after reading one too many 6moons reviews (probably written by a journo with a degree in History and Politics...) and due to expectation bias imagines all sorts of non existent phenomena, all literally incredible, to be real.
I mean that would be ludicrous enough really... but to compound it by stating that what you imagine you heard on your stereo trumps the entirety of mankind's scientific knowledge really takes it to another level!
 
but to compound it by stating that what you imagine you heard on your stereo trumps the entirety of mankind's scientific knowledge really takes it to another level!
Fortunately there are plenty of quality designers who actually listen without prejudice. Expectation bias is amazingly strong in many who think they have learnt everything there is to know. Poor science, but very human.
BTW, spark plugs frequently contain a resistor, so little difference really.
 
These circular arguments could easily be laid to rest if those who hold certain views didn't insist on stating them over and over again ad infinitum (Arkless).
 


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