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Power Cables. Are they overhyped? Part III

I think some people aren't taking this issue as seriously as Russ Andrews bank account would like.
 
Holy shit, just remembered I have monoblocks so I need 2 cables 3M long

Thats £ 4 K with the Cryo, and fairy dust fuses. :cool::cool::cool:

http://www.russandrews.com/basket/

Still on the bright side I qualify for free delivery..

I hope Ragman and Co. are right about the improvements I will experience.
 
BE718 said:
No its not. Please refer to my further comments. You have not understood what has been said.

Troll? Because I dont agree with your position? Or because you havent understood whats been said? Whatsnext understood just fine.

Yes there is a lot more shit flying around these days. Thats why there are emc compliance rules and tests. I would hope that competent designers would be aware of the issues and design mitigations accordingly.

Perhaps the incompetent designers have to rely on funky mains cables hohoho :p
Click to expand...

So, given you accept that there's a lot more shit about these days and that this necessitated new emc compliance rules how exactly were the designers of equipment from before all this happened supposed to allow for this? Using your definitions they are castigated as incompetent designers. Equipment designers don't have crystal balls only hairy ones (or non at all for the women engineers). This is why I characterised your analysis as seriously lacking. You don't appear to be stupid so I can only conclude you are trolling or lazy.

Btw Good scientists and engineers normally look very critically at their statements when they get challenged. I commend the technique to you. As for Whatsnext he is clearly easily pleased and uncritical.

P.S. If it the penny has not dropped yet my bone of contention here is your laughable and deluded claim that you are stating "facts" when any reasonable individual knows that these are merely your opinions.
 
neil said:
So, given you accept that there's a lot more shit about these days and that this necessitated new emc compliance rules how exactly were the designers of equipment from before all this happened supposed to allow for this?


Using your definitions they are castigated as incompetent designers. Equipment designers don't have crystal balls only hairy ones (or non at all for the women engineers). This is why I characterised your analysis as seriously lacking. You don't appear to be stupid so I can only conclude you are trolling or lazy.

Btw Good scientists and engineers normally look very critically at their statements when they get challenged. I commend the technique to you. As for Whatsnext he is clearly easily pleased and uncritical.

P.S. If it the penny has not dropped yet my bone of contention here is your laughable and deluded claim that you are stating "facts" when any reasonable individual knows that these are merely your opinions.
Click to expand...

Since when has this thread been about equipment designed in the 70's and 80's? We have had EMC regulations since 89.

So what on earth are you banging on about??????

If a such an old design is still being currently sold ( I think even Naim have moved on their designs now), don't you think it would be prudent of the designer to re-visit and modify the design to cope with these new conditions, if they are indeed a problem? Surely a good designer would?
 
BE718 said:
Im afraid you dont understand and Im not sure I can make it much simpler for you.

I do not think they make a difference. That is your claim, but if you insist it is the case then you have to accept your amp is deficient. One follows the other. I am not saying your amp is deficient because I don't think it is affected by the mains cable.

Pretty simple isn't it
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You should apply to be Spicer's understudy.
However, you say you do not think they make a difference, then you say if a difference is heard the amp' has to be "design deficient"
So, with the design deficient amp' a difference may be heard with a better cable.

Simple as.
 
Errol said:
You should apply to be Spicer's understudy.
However, you say you do not think they make a difference, then you say if a difference is heard the amp' has to be "design deficient"
So, with the design deficient amp' a difference may be heard with a better cable.

Simple as.
Click to expand...

Yes, so if you think (not me, its your assertion) that your amp is affected by mains cables then yes you have to concede it has a deficient design.

Yes very simple.

I don't believe it is affected, but if you do you are by definition saying its deficient.

Why are we still having this conversation? Perhaps next time instead of your circular statements, can you ask someone else to explain it to you? There may well be people with better skills to do so than I. Or perhaps you should concede that its a concept thats just beyond your understanding? That's nothing to be ashamed of.
 
Three groups of people with regard to one of these amps that some members have identified as benefiting from a change of mains cable.

A Change mains cables and hear a difference in the amps sound
B Change mains cables and hear no difference in the amps sound
C What are they on about (vast proportion of the global population)

For A the amp is faulty, B not faulty, C where did you go for your holidays.

If you like talking about how mains cables change your world pop into http://theaudiostandard.net/thread/3053/mains-cables-hear nobody seems to have accepted his offer to demonstrate yet but they are talking the idea up.
 
The way I see the possible causes of cable making a difference:

Quality of connection at both ends..tightness, contact area, oxidisation.

Microphonics. A lump of heavy wire hanging from back of amp, subject to sound wave vibration from music blasting at it. Transmission of vibration into the amp subtlety effecting components. Decoupling in design of connectors.

The cable in close proximity to amplifying circuits, possibly picking up rfi from external sources or the transformer in the amp. Weave / sheilding / material may change the characteristics.

I don't see bad amp design to blame above.

Naim, Linn and Rega off the top of my head supply top end kit with non bog standard kettle leads.

Surely there are enough rational reasons to at least try a cable costing over 99p?

I got a Russ Andrew Yello cable off ebay for £20, and it was better than the cheapo I had in place. If it wasn't I could have sold it on. I took it apart and the amp end did have better contact mechanism. The cable is weaved also, maybe that makes a difference. But that's it for me, £20.
Any more would be diminishing returns, but if others want to go there, it's their money.
 
venton said:
The way I see the possible causes of cable making a difference:

Quality of connection at both ends..tightness, contact area, oxidisation.

Microphonics. A lump of heavy wire hanging from back of amp, subject to sound wave vibration from music blasting at it. Transmission of vibration into the amp subtlety effecting components. Decoupling in design of connectors.

The cable in close proximity to amplifying circuits, possibly picking up rfi from external sources or the transformer in the amp. Weave / sheilding / material may change the characteristics.

I don't see bad amp design to blame above.

Naim, Linn and Rega off the top of my head supply top end kit with non bog standard kettle leads.

Surely there are enough rational reasons to at least try a cable costing over 99p?

I got a Russ Andrew Yello cable off ebay for £20, and it was better than the cheapo I had in place. If it wasn't I could have sold it on. I took it apart and the amp end did have better contact mechanism. The cable is weaved also, maybe that makes a difference. But that's it for me, £20.
Any more would be diminishing returns, but if others want to go there, it's their money.
Click to expand...

I bought super cables for £35 and ~£50 and they made no difference. In fact the £35 cables IEC was so tight it damaged the socket putting it in and taking it out. All for no benefit other than letting me say I tried them and they made no difference truthfully. The socket repair was lower cost during a service for the amp.

I think people are letting their imaginations colour their thoughts before they even buy a super mains cable. Creative thinking works wonders. The urge to improve drives the mind
 
BE718 said:
Why are you still having this conversation? Perhaps next time instead of your circular statements, can you ask someone else to explain it to you? There may well be people with better skills to do so than I. Or perhaps you should concede that its a concept that's just beyond your understanding? That's nothing to be ashamed of.
Click to expand...

Snap! ;)
 
whatsnext said:
Three groups of people with regard to one of these amps that some members have identified as benefiting from a change of mains cable.

A Change mains cables and hear a difference in the amps sound
B Change mains cables and hear no difference in the amps sound
C What are they on about (vast proportion of the global population)
Click to expand...
No, "C" is What are they on about? Think I'll give one a try & see if I can hear a difference". Something you did, except having not heard a difference you still went ahead and bought one.
 
BE718 said:
Since when has this thread been about equipment designed in the 70's and 80's? We have had EMC regulations since 89.

So what on earth are you banging on about??????

If a such an old design is still being currently sold ( I think even Naim have moved on their designs now), don't you think it would be prudent of the designer to re-visit and modify the design to cope with these new conditions, if they are indeed a problem? Surely a good designer would?
Click to expand...

Ok systems thinking 1.01. Since a mains cable is totally incapable, on its own, does not constitute a hifi system then this whole discussion on the thread only makes sense if you consider any possible impact of such cables in the context of a complete system. Equipment is therefore a key part of the discussion.

Secondly, in several statements on this thread you have said that any equipment that is not designed to cope with "normal" variations in mains supply are badly designed. The implication being that the designers are not competent. As you failed to provide any qualification to your statement equipment designed and built before the EMC regulations is clearly included within it. This is rather key given the original ethos of pfm and the equipment used by many of its members. Old kit abounds and some of it has been modified with IEC connectors rather than captive mains leads. I suspect that most of the olive series Naim kit was designed prior to those regulations as well. A lot of this sort of kit is still in use (my second system has circa 1982 Hitachi amps at the moment as one example).

Finally, in response to another poster you stated that your statement referred to at point two above was fact and not simply opinion. I am merely pointing out that your original statement is actually nothing more than opinion and has some pretty big holes in it. That was why I labelled it as absolutist. I enquired whether you were trolling as I assumed you were bright enough to know that there were holes along the lines I have pointed out and could not understand your assertion of the opinion being "fact" if trolling was not your intent. My apologies if my assumption was incorrect.

WRT designing in the modern age yes I would expect equipment designers to consider these factors. However, not all things that could be done will be done. As I said in my first post on the thread designs are an exercise in trading off a set of your idealised properties. Cost and ease of manufacture are two critical elements for any business. A wise old engineer once taught me an incredibly valuable lesson when he said to me "you should have seen the spec for my system before I had to build it to a specified cost". At the time I was being a little bit too impressed with the potential of an American system (not hifi, real world important stuff) based purely on its specified requirements.
 
venton said:
The way I see the possible causes of cable making a difference:

Quality of connection at both ends..tightness, contact area, oxidisation.

Microphonics.

The cable in close proximity to amplifying circuits, possibly picking up rfi from external sources or the transformer in the amp. Weave / sheilding / material may change the characteristics.

I don't see bad amp design to blame above.
.
Click to expand...

The problem with "blame" is that it depends on the circumstances, etc. I'd expect a designer/maker to try and ensure their amp worked OK over the range of mains voltages, shapes, and dc and earth returns, etc, specs the mains suppliers define as within their specs. And to cover a bit more than that for luck Ideally, cover what is typical for the bulk of homes. (The snag there being who surveys this and where are the stats?)

Connections: This isn't a cable issue as such but, yes, you want decent ohmic contacts. So plugs and sockets have to be well made, etc.

Microphonics: For *mains* cables this really should not be an issue. I'd be interested if anyone can show that thumping a mains cable in normal use produces a significant measurable change to the output of a well regarded amp in a normal setup.

Pickup of RFI: The snag with 'weaving' or 'twisting' is that for the same reason that this tends to reduce radiation being picked up it also tends to reduce any RF on the cables being radiated! So it may help one class of problem at the expense of increasing the risk of another.

To make sense of this people do need to make two mental distinctions about the assumed mechanisms when they talk about 'RFI'.

Firstly, having the 'RFI' guided *along* the cables is quite different to having them act as an antenna and gather it in from the surrounding fields.

Secondly: Treat LF as distinct from RF. Changes to the shape of the mains waveform when you look on a scope are largely due to things like the leading tops being shaved by current demand or chunks being eaten by PSUs. The bulk of this is at low frequencies which - apart from series resistance/inductance at LF - a cable won't alter much. (And if it has a high resistance/inductance at LF it will also *generate* this when the amp PSU takes chunks of current. So as with the above weave point, may make one problem worse to 'cure' another.)

The real RF is at higher frequenecies, but may cover a very wide range from neat audio up. So for reasons already discussed, finding a mains cable for this is coin tossing. Fine if you're lucky. But my view remains that for *RF*I a cheap filter is quicker, cheaper, and more reliable. Just look at the rejection specs of 10 quid filters. For *LF* garbage, if your amp dislikes it, then your mains may be so bad that you need a regenerator. Or a change of amp.
 
I asked this a day or two ago what appetite is the for a poll?

Qu: Do mains cables affect the sound of your amplifier?

Lets see how many of PFMs 23000 members go for yes

AoS, Marcoville, has one {Do cables make a difference to your listening} seems a bit too vague and generalised.
 
neil said:
Ok systems thinking 1.01. Since a mains cable is totally incapable, on its own, does not constitute a hifi system then this whole discussion on the thread only makes sense if you consider any possible impact of such cables in the context of a complete system. Equipment is therefore a key part of the discussion.

Secondly, in several statements on this thread you have said that any equipment that is not designed to cope with "normal" variations in mains supply are badly designed. The implication being that the designers are not competent. As you failed to provide any qualification to your statement equipment designed and built before the EMC regulations is clearly included within it. This is rather key given the original ethos of pfm and the equipment used by many of its members. Old kit abounds and some of it has been modified with IEC connectors rather than captive mains leads. I suspect that most of the olive series Naim kit was designed prior to those regulations as well. A lot of this sort of kit is still in use (my second system has circa 1982 Hitachi amps at the moment as one example).

Finally, in response to another poster you stated that your statement referred to at point two above was fact and not simply opinion. I am merely pointing out that your original statement is actually nothing more than opinion and has some pretty big holes in it. That was why I labelled it as absolutist. I enquired whether you were trolling as I assumed you were bright enough to know that there were holes along the lines I have pointed out and could not understand your assertion of the opinion being "fact" if trolling was not your intent. My apologies if my assumption was incorrect.

WRT designing in the modern age yes I would expect equipment designers to consider these factors. However, not all things that could be done will be done. As I said in my first post on the thread designs are an exercise in trading off a set of your idealised properties. Cost and ease of manufacture are two critical elements for any business. A wise old engineer once taught me an incredibly valuable lesson when he said to me "you should have seen the spec for my system before I had to build it to a specified cost". At the time I was being a little bit too impressed with the potential of an American system (not hifi, real world important stuff) based purely on its specified requirements.
Click to expand...
This all seems very sensible as far as it goes, but the point at issue is much simpler than that-
1. if and to that extent that the explanation for "sounds different" reports is some physical effect operating through sound pressure waves only, not the ordinary operation of multi-sensory integration, subconscious cognitive processing and/or a tendency to project minutiae of one's experience to hifi kit......
2 and that effect is down to rf filtering in the mains cable (more plausible assuming 1, but that's a big assumption) then
3 then using a mains cable rather than an rf filter would be a dumb (unreliable partial) way of achieving this effect. Correct solution costs a few quid. not millions. less than even a cheap aftermarket mains cable. [this point applies either in the mains cable powered device or by way of aftermarket add on]
4. hierarchies of mains cables would particularly make zero sense (see Russ Andrews graphs comparing the various levels of pointless lowgrade-rf-filtering mains cables )

however
1. if but only if I take as my starting point "I hear differences in mains cables"
2. and I will only believe that I am not detecting a difference in the sound pressure waves if you prove to me to my satisfaction beyond any doubt reasonable or otherwise that it it not possible for such an effect to be caused by the physical properties so the mains cable
3. then my mains cable is an rf filter sounds plausible, that'll do for me.
but
4. and I am not interested in really thinking whether this makes sense, I just want to go back to thinking what an amazing measurement device my ears are. Pass me the next mains cable.
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
Microphonics: For *mains* cables this really should not be an issue. I'd be interested if anyone can show that thumping a mains cable in normal use produces a significant measurable change to the output of a well regarded amp in a normal setup.
Click to expand...

I think thumping may not be the correct test.
I can only speak from my experience here, but I had an example of microphonics in action. I noticed by accident that my Naim 72 preamp case would 'ring' if I tapped it.
I therefore damped it by putting bluetack at the back to couple the case to the body. It no longer rang.
Expecting an improvement, I heard the opposite, the sound had no life to it. Simply removing and replacing the damping a few times and the differences were clear.
This piqued my interest, as perhaps Naim had designed the case to be decoupled.
This is only relevant as it made me realise that vibration (the non thumping kind) made a difference to the sound. Whether any instrument could detect the removal of 'life' from the sound, I don't know.
But I see this as logical thinking, observing an effect and learning from it.
I always found it weird how the power socket on the back of my CD player (cdi) kind of floated in the case - but again on closer inspection, this was by design, to counter vibration I presume.
Power cables do tend to come with sockets both end, so could play a part in the 'sound' of the cable as much as the wire itself. The Naim powerline cable appears to be designed with decoupling at each end. Far too expensive for me to try, but I would keep an open mind that they may have some small effect.
I know many hate Naim, but I like what they do as clearly they try things and listen with an open mind. If hifi manufacturers only employ cynics, I would see them as being somewhat handicapped in the engineers would not even try things which weren't in a textbook.
 
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