Why Power Cables Affect Sound


I just bought a new CD player and was underwhelmed with it compared to my cheaper, lower quality CD player. That’s when it hit me that my cheaper CD player is using an upgraded power cable. When I put an upgraded power cable on my new CD player, the sound was instantly transformed: the treble was tamed, the music was more dynamic and lifelike, and overall more musical. 

This got me thinking as to how in the world a power cable can affect sound. I want to hear all of your ideas. Here’s one of my ideas:

I have heard from many sources that a good power cable is made of multiple gauge conductors from large gauge to small gauge. The electrons in a power cable are like a train with each electron acting as a train car. When a treble note is played, for example, the small gauge wires can react quickly because that “train” has much less mass than a large gauge conductor. If you only had one large gauge conductor, you would need to accelerate a very large train for a small, quick treble note, and this leads to poor dynamics. A similar analogy might be water in a pipe. A small pipe can react much quicker to higher frequencies than a large pipe due to the decreased mass/momentum of the water in the pipe. 

That’s one of my ideas. Now I want to hear your thoughts and have a general discussion of why power cables matter. 

If you don’t think power cables matter at all, please refrain from derailing the conversation with antagonism. There a time and place for that but not in this thread please. 
mkgus
Post removed 
And someone asked me why I said “please refrain from derailing the conversation with antagonism.” 😂🤣😅
Why does a powercord affect the sound?
My completely made up theory.. All my own, no proof, just conjecture...
The power wave has a shape, a ’volume’ and it can be focused or spread out.. fuzzy, tight, sloppy, scrambled, coherent, THICK or THIN. All these ways the waveform is changed affect the way the equipment can use the power, for better or worse.
Now those words I used are naturally a way of describing things that, currently (pun) have no names in AC current (pun) delivery.
And naturally all this is IN MY HEAD, and no effort has been made to verify such stuff. Maybe though, someday....
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djones51544 posts12-17-2018 1:13pm

I guess I don’t understand what a power cord does. I though it basically extends the romex in your walls from the panel box to your component, whether it’s an amp or vacuum cleaner. So if the romex is good enough from the panel box to the receptacle why isn’t the heavy guage wire the amp company supplied with their amp good enough, as long as it meets specs for what it is designed for or should you change out the romex in the walls for the same wire as your mega $$$$ 6 feet of cord? It’s not as if it’s doing anything other than supplying electricity to the component. We could also extrapolate this back through the power grid to the generating plant.

I though it basically extends the romex in your walls from the panel box to your component, whether it’s an amp or vacuum cleaner.
No..... The power cord is an extension of the leads of the primary winding of the power transformer of the equipment.

It’s not as if it’s doing anything other than supplying electricity to the component.
But yet it does.......



We could also extrapolate this back through the power grid to the generating plant.
No..... Technically only back to the step down utility company’s isolation power transformer that feeds your house and any other houses that may be connected to the isolation transformer.