In 1985, while dealing with a common home builder, "3 home styles / 3 color choices", I was able to negotiate double sheet rock in listening - living area and home run romex wiring to the locations for my equipment. No before and after comparison available. After listening for a few weeks, I went to the local home improvement store and changed the outlets from 15 amp to the 20 amp outlets. The improvement was immediate and positive. ALL interactions in all areas of your system be affected if you have the ability to compare, patience to listen, and understanding of the changes made. Sometimes the differences are not an improvement, but there will be a change.
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.
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.
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kob. Prior to my recent luxury upgrade to all Furutech Duplex. I used (for many years) Pass & Seymour heavy duty 20 amp duplex. They were great compared to the economy junk installed with 'lowest cost' in mind. Even thought they only cost about $5 each. They are at least 90% of the way to best possible duplex. |
jeffwyo577 posts12-21-2018 9:20amI guess you need to tear out all the drywall & change all the 12 or 14 ga romex that is is your house too then, make sure you use gold plated outlets.@ jeffwyo57 Actually 2 conductor with ground NM sheathed cable (Romex is a Trade Name for NM sheathed cable) is quite good for branch circuit wiring. The design make-up of the cable helps cancel any induced voltage on the equipment grounding conductor. Better though, is aluminum armor 2 wire with ground MC cable. Worse is metallic conduit with the Hot, neutral, and insulated equipment grounding conductor pulled randomly in the conduit. Actually testing measurements? Oh yes, for you nay-stayers. Read pages 31 through page 38. https://centralindianaaes.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/indy-aes-2012-seminar-w-notes-v1-0.pdf I live in the USA. May I ask what country you live in? Jim |
As an EE I initially chaffed at the notion that a power chord could affect the sound of a piece of equipment because the AC signal is typically rectified and smoothed to DC by capacitors. After being blown away by apparently large improvements in SQ after installing conditioners and wires from Synergistic Research and then Audience, I started to think more about it. The first point is that my assumption of smoothing by the capacitors is weak. There is always ripple, a saw tooth shaped variation in the DC (not quite) voltage, and sharp current transient spikes replenishing the energy stored in the caps. These spikes are comprised of high frequency components, producing corresponding distorting voltages, which may not be effectively handled (filtered) by the large filter caps which are not ideal and function as intended for low frequencies only. These high frequency signals then bleed through the caps and can then be reflected back and forth between the power source and the amplifier circuitry based on transmission theory. This doesn’t even address the potential noise generated in digital systems that will appear on the signal and power bus of a system. Perhaps power chords and line-conditioning affects these also? Our problem is that we distill a technical problem down to a simple ohm’s law based steady state small-signal analysis. In reality, power connections are inherently a large signal transient analysis problem which could be analyzed but aren’t. Bottom line is that many of us learn Ohm’s law and think we understand everything and we try to simplify/distill a problem down to fit our analysis abilities. Ironically, I don’t believe that many of the cable producers have great technical insight, but rather, they have a practical insight into what seems to work. |
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