You started at the right place with the right product, my man. If I would have known this from the get go, I would have saved a lot of money on interconnect and speaker swaps.
Do power cords make an audible difference?
I recently discovered the inexpensive Pangea AC-9 power cord. It was so inexpensive I decided, just for kicks, to buy one for my sacd player and my integrated amp. I was extremely doubtful I would hear any difference at all. I plugged them in, turned on the system and I was surprised. I immediately invited a non-audiophile over for a listen. She had only heard my system for maybe 30 minutes with the old cords and I asked her if she could hear a difference. After listening to only two tracks she said "it sounds more clear". This is exactly what I had thought. I also noticed the sound stage seemed bigger. Now, it's not A huge difference but it is noticeable to the casual observer, so it is significant, which is more than I hoped for.
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Sebrof: Tuesday night I was wearing blue jeans and my system sounded very good to me. Wednesday night I was wearing slacks and it sounded just a little better. I do not conclude that slacks make my system sound better.For a specific example that supports Sebrof's comment, see the posts by Atmasphere and me in this thread, which illustrate how easy it can be to attribute a perceived sonic attribute to the wrong variable. For easy reference, following are the relevant paragraphs: Atmasphere: Power cords: a 2V drop across a power cord can rob a tube amplifier of as much as 40% of its output power! Cripes! You're trying to say you can't hear that?? So this is very measurable and audible as well. On lesser transistor amps, a power cord will be less audible as the drop across the cable is reduced, but a class A transistor amp will easily bring out cable weaknesses.Regards, -- Al |
A friend of mine told me that if I could not hear the difference of a power cord he loaned me, my system could not be high end. Maybe he was right. I didn't hear any difference.IMO it is a common fallacy to assume that system quality and musical resolution necessarily correlate with the ability to resolve differences in components, cables, or power. Certainly that CAN be the case. However, consider some examples where it is not. A speaker having impedance characteristics that fluctuate widely over the frequency range, drop to low values at some frequencies, and have difficult phase angles, will be much more revealing of amplifier and speaker cable differences than one that presents an easy load. A source component or preamplifier with a high output impedance will be more revealing of differences in interconnect cables than one with a low output impedance. An electronic component that has unbalanced interfaces will be more sensitive to differences in interconnect cable shield resistance if it has higher stray capacitance and ac leakage paths in its power transformer (which increase sensitivity to ground loop issues). And, addressing specifically the subject matter of this thread, increased sensitivity of an amplifier to power cord differences can be the result of looser regulation in the amp's power supply. Or it can be the result of greater amounts of high frequency noise being produced by that power supply, which increases the need for effective shielding in the power cord, to prevent that noise from coupling to other parts of the system. Or it can be the result of poor shielding or greater sensitivity to that noise elsewhere in the system. Or it can be the result of poor rejection by the amp's power supply of noise or distortion on the incoming ac. None of those kinds of factors mean that the system that is more resolving of cable or component or power differences will be more resolving of musical detail, or capable of higher quality music reproduction. They just mean that it may be more difficult to attain optimal results with that system. Regards, -- Al |
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