Jmcgrogan2 wrote:
"I am now of the mindset that the power cords affect the sound, good or bad, more than interconnects or speaker cables do"
I've heard this occur as well -- and thought the same thing at times -- but I wouldn't state it as being any kind of hard and fast rule, since there's also times I've heard other cables make more of a difference (especially speaker cables) -- or, to put it another way, times I've heard power cords make less of a difference. Really all depends on the gear and cables in question, and I think it's too variable to generalize.
Xiekitchen wrote:
"Mcpody is right: every cord will show an immediately audible difference and sometimes dramatically better and sometimes even worse than stock cord"
Actually, Mcpody never said that -- reread his post.
What Jeff_jones wrote proves it ain't always so:
"Tried 3 or 4 power cords on amp, cd player, pre's, etc...Made no difference whatsoever"
It happens. Whether it's a matter of system resolution, the listener's ears, or maybe components with superior power supplies, or pristine wall power, we don't know. But not everyone who plays around with power cords is convinced, though it seems that at least 90% of Audiogonners on the forums have concluded power cords are a significant factor.
Rlwainwright wrote:
"...it remains to be shown that a good-quality, inexepensive Belden cord can be bested by the megabuck cords. We're not talking rocket science here, all we're trying to do is get the AC from the wall to the component. Spending more than $50 or $60 for a power cord is for the hopelessly optimistic"
Without needing to come off as defending "megabuck" power cords, this is a personal opinion, even if it's not presented as such. And if I don't miss my guess, it sounds like one lacking extensive basis in actual experience with "megabuck" cords, in which case it could be a less meaningful opinion for the rest of us than many others posted here. Hey, of course "it remains to be shown" to anyone who's never tried to disprove it, but even if you did try and didn't alter your opinion, that still wouldn't prove the situation couldn't be different for somebody else. This statement has the ring of a pre-formed conclusion, based on some Platonic but inadequate conception of what might constitute "science" in this arena. But the blithely spun quip "all we're trying to do is get the AC from the wall to the component" glosses over relevent, scientific factors. In audio, making your mind up in advance of listening can be self-satisfying but self-deluding. I agree there's no magic involved with audio, that price isn't always directly tied to anything tangible or provable, and there are many things in the high end -- expensive cables certainly among them -- which often don't come close to being intrinsically "worth" what's charged for them. But, whatever our reactions to high end prices, none of the foregoing necessarily means that gear with an exotic price tag, determined mostly by market (and marketing) forces, won't also sound better enough to be "worth" the extra expenditure for those who can afford it. Bias probably runs both ways here: audiophiles of sufficient means who spend "megabucks" will no doubt sometimes be influenced to assert gear superiority for just that reason, while audiophiles of modest means could be just as influenced to deny those claims and assert the equivalence of whatever they can afford (or at least until they hear something better). But ya know, since this is a subjective hobby, which is only about pleasing one's self, at the end of the day it really doesn't matter if we operate with some biases that can't be "proved".
Ferrari wrote:
"Ever wonder why the likes of manufacturers such as Krell, Pass Labs, Levinson and others, do not supply esoteric power cords? Makes one wonder in a way. After all what those products cost and few dollars more is of zero consequence to provide a power cable, other than what is usually supplied"
I have to say I've never understood this argument, which has been made before. It's like asking why speaker manufacturers don't include fancy speaker cables, or why mass-market gear comes with freebie interconnects but high end gear doesn't come with any. This is no mystery to me at all: since most audiophiles prefer to choose their own cables, and consider them to be components in their own right or very nearly so, why would it be incumbent upon electronics makers to include fancy power cords, or any indictment of them if they don't? Why should power cords be singled out for this critique? (Maybe it has to do with the fact that in yesteryear, lest we forget, many power cords were simply built-in and IEC sockets weren't de riguer.) In fact, it would probably make more sense in this context at the present day and age, to ask why high end electronics manufacturers provide any cheapie power cord at all -- maybe they should just omit it altogether. But since the tradition of providing an indifferent cord can't affect anything too much one way or the other, I certainly don't take this practice to be suggestive of some kind of double-talking malfeasance.
Shadorne wrote:
"I too would expect that speaker cords and interconnnects will make much more of a difference than a power cord (after all at least they are in the signal path)"
Should we take this as an implicit admission that you've never experimented with power cords? Look, a lot of us felt this way once upon a time, until we tried a power cord on something where it made a significant difference. And the assumption that a power cord isn't "in the signal path" -- acknowledging the conventional useage of that phrase with which we're all familiar -- is emminently challengeable when you look at it as being part of the power supply, and realize that what we hear as the output signal actually *is* the power supply, as modulated by the input signal.
Audphile1 wrote:
"I had several McCormack amps, where an upgraded power cord always made bigger difference than I experienced with the Pass Labs amp"
I used to have a DNA-125 and found cords made a pretty fair difference, not the biggest I've heard but sizeable. Now I have a DNA-500, a far more revealing and wider-envelope amp that draws at least twice as much wall power, yet somewhat to my surprise find that with it the same cords make considerably less difference (though still some, and still enough for me to care, just not knock you over the head type). This could be taken as evidence for the power supply quality theory of cord impact, something Sean has written about on these forums, but for which I haven't always found corroborating results. Personally I still tend to feel it's something of a crapshoot, not necessarily with obvious or consistent explanations.
Tarsando wrote:
"I take the power cords that come with PCs, put them in the freezer for one month. Then use them. Significant improvement"
Aside from not being able to figure what "power cords that come with PCs" means (I thought a PC *was* a power cord, when it wasn't a personal computer), I wish this to be a mild jibe at the Beltians, but it ain't pointed or funny enough so I'm afraid it's the real thing. Well, it's a delusion if you actually think you can reliably tell the difference between something like a cord which you reauditioned after a one month layoff for "treatment". Audio memory simply isn't that accurate, nowhere near. Now, I admit I don't believe that the temperature of a freezer could do anything permanent to metal -- and also admit I haven't tried your experiment (or even played around with any real cryogenically treated gear, for that matter). But regardless of what opinion one might hold about the freezer jazz, to determine anything useful either way, you'd have to obtain two examples of the cord to be treated so that one could be held out of the freezer, allowing direct A/B comparisons to be performed at the end of the lengthy interval. (And if you're a freezer believer they probably ought to be done blind.) Anything less is merely wishful thinking (or, I hope, a put-on, but you can never be sure with audiophiles when Peter Belt is out there running around loose.)
