Yiiiiiihaaa!!! The 20'000 UKP power cable is here!

[arthur]

I've just bought one!!!

 

[dave]

Chaps,

I think I'm going to stick with my simple cavemen logic. If I consistently and reliably hear a difference, I'll choose the one that sounds best and sleep like a baby without a care in the world.

As always, do whatever works best for you.

regards,

dave

 

[Evil Emperor]

Up to a point that may be true but that would make cables design different from HiFi design in general. For example different box manufacturers use wildy different technologies and topologies in their products, and there is little sign of convergence. Also for any one manufacturer with a favoured approach, there is almost always some subjective listening tests and tweaks at the end to fine tune the product.
It was interesing to read in the Audiolab thread that John Westlake didn't have a difinitive answer as to why the "new" transformer for the CDQ made such a subjective difference to the sound, when measurements found negligible difference (measurements of mains ripple that is).

The topologies don't vary that much in reality. There's nothing inside most audio electronics that would flummox a good electronics engineer from another discipline, and aside from acoustic suspension, there is nothing in a modern loudspeaker that would make Olsen or Briggs scratch their heads for long.

There is always room for the 'known unknowns' (as Rumsfelt put it), but the likelihood in the case of the transformer is something's going on that isn't being measured at Audiolab, but is a known function of the new transformer. It may be some 'secret recipe' function of the transformer that the transformer maker isn't going to divulge, but secret recipes invariably involve known ingredients and processes rather than magic wands and ju-ju.

If it were purely down to something inexplicable and mysterious in the transformer, no one would be confident how it happened and whether it would continue to happen when the next batch of transformers arrived.

And that's where the cable vendors fail, IMO. If there is no reliable way to objectively quantify what special stuff is happening in the cable, how do you test that it's happening?

 

[seranil]

Electronic engineers, Mr Westlake included, are susceptible to bias as everybody else. The best electronic engineers are aware of that fact and work around it. But they are few and far between in the audiophile world.