hospital grade or commercial grade receptacles ?

Tobias, I love Montreal, and I wish I got there more often. The closest I usually get is Toronto (yet another awesome Canadian city - but Montreal is more fun IMO), otherwise I would enjoy taking you up on your offer. Hearing other peoples' systems is always interesting, but hearing other peoples' MUSIC is fascinating. I've developed so many new interests by listening with others. Especially since I have a tendency to spend too much time with Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert, left to my own devices.

I agree with you on higher contact pressure being better, and I think I mentioned that once. Good signal transfer is always good, though I've never been able to measure an insertion loss for power cords approaching a tenth of a volt, even on conventional stock outlets. Of course, my homes have always been of rather recent construction.

I think I also mentioned I'm not a fan of participating in double-blind tests. Frankly, I find them tedious, and I'm of the opinion that the annoyance of a DBT tends to mask differences, but that's only an opinion. I like to listen, but if I hear differences that correspond with measurements I'm more inclined to make purchase decisions based on my perceived differences.

I think I'll be able to hang on to my "collective hallucination" notion easily, because I'm convinced I'm a victim myself sometimes. Once I performed a comparative cable test, between 18ga speaker cables and 10ga cables, and I was convinced I heard an improvement from the 10ga cables. Then I got up and found I had switched the cables improperly (I was distracted by a friend) and I was listening to the 18ga cables all along. That incident, along with others, taught me a lot about wanting to find a difference. Another reason I can hang on is that I'm having fun. I'm not taking the insults seriously.

Eldartford, I hope you do not think it is me saying that you can't make sense if you don't have scientific training. My message is that if you think you are observing phenomena that run counter to well-proven knowledge and understanding you should check your premises. In this case, people are claiming to hear differences between power cords and outlets, when they measure identically with proven parameters (I emphasize the proven part), are not in the audio signal path, and there's no known way they can affect the audio signal in anything except a very indirect manner. And then they assume that because they think they hear a difference, that somehow that proves that humanity's understanding of how electrical circuits work is incomplete. I have a problem with that. I don't think scientific training is an issue, I just think that if you can't understand how some technical knowledge applies formal training can't hurt.

Irv, let me ask you this, does our knowledge of how electrical circuits work define how music sounds in a given system? Are you absolutely positively certain that our current knowledge of electricity would preclude any possibility that what some of us hear is little more that plecebo with reference to outlets and powercords, would filters or any type of wiring configuration in power cords make a difference, or is this just plain impossible?

I have overall enjoyed your responses but in no way can agree with your conclusions that there is no possibility that what some of us are hearing is nothing more than self-induced, my personal experiences are emphatically sure of this, as sure as you are but for very different reasons. Is this a religious argument, believers vs non based on current evidence (science) or "faith through truth in what I hear". Are you that damn certain that you're right?

"Are you that certain that you're right?"

Tubegroover, that's a damned good question! The answer is that I haven't seen (or heard) any compelling evidence that my assertion is wrong. If you boil it down far enough, what we think we "know" about the universe and the way it operates exists only because we hypothesize about the way the universe works, and then we devise tests that either prove or disprove our guesses. For some physical phenomena the guesses do change over time a little bit. Sometimes a lot, but not often. I blame it all on Einstein for so famously changing some guesses made by Newton in such a big way, because it gave people the impression, I think, that other guesses we've made are subject to just as much change. That our understanding is somehow superficial. That might be true in quantum physics, certainly so in some areas of biology, but electricity is a lot different.

Not that electricity and electromagnetism are so simple. A friend of mine specializes in electromagnetic interference effects for multi-gigahertz electronics, and the math he uses is formidable. There's also a lot judgement involved sometimes in product development that makes laymen wonder about "understanding". For example, high-volume production circuit boards are typcially made from a material called "FR-4". It's green, fiberglass, and it's cheap. If you look inside of your PC you'll see a lot of it. Anyway, 10 years ago some of the best analog electrical engineers were of the opinion that for signals with a clock frequency of greater than 500MHz we just might have to drop FR-4, and go to more expensive materials like teflon (due to noise levels, among other things). Anyway, 10 years later we're still using FR-4 for signals well into the multi-gigahertz range. The engineers recommending teflon back then were "wrong". Was this due to a lack of understanding? Did we learn new things about electricity since then?

No, to both questions. Engineers learned more about developing what are called "design rules", that more stringently specified high-speed circuitry to function on FR-4. More was learned about how to manage noise and EMI in physical designs. The engineers were actually correct, using the old rules. So now we have cheap multi-gigahertz circuitry, and nothing I'm aware of was learned about electrical theory. Much was learned about how to engineer products, but it's the same theories, proven over and over again, thousands of times per day, by observations called ultra-precise measurements under controlled conditions. We know how electricity functions because everytime we properly construct a given scenario it works EXACTLY as predicted. Every time.

Do I KNOW that two properly functioning and spec'd power cords are not going to sound audibly different? Anyone who has studied philosophy understands that KNOW is a heavyweight word. I don't KNOW. But if there were audible differences the physical effects that caused the audible differences - that we can't currently explain -would surely show up as anomalies in other areas where low-level currents or signals are incredibly important. (They are not in 120v AC power.) Microchip design, test equipment, 10GHz bit-serial signalling on copper cables... somewhere. And nothing has been detected. Sometimes you need really, really clean power, but you use active devices to achieve it. Our ears are not sensitive devices compared to certain test equipment. Some people don't want to believe it, but it is true.

So in the end, yes, I'm pretty damn certain.

Irv, for someone who hides behind a curtain of science (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain) and has distain((???) do you mean disdain) for anyone who who uses the scientific means of proving something, you certainly are critical of science. As I pointed out the scientific method of proof, is one which is observable, and repeatable. No, I am not a scientist, but I did get A's and B's in two years of college physics.

The ability to measure results has nothing to do with their validity. Albert is right when he points out that there are things around us every day that everyone accepts without question that cannot be measured or even understood.

The strangest thing about science, and people who claim to be conversant in scientific theory is that people who are doing 'cutting edge' research are far less dogmatic about any scientific theory than thier less knowledgable counterparts in the educational or business world.

If Albert and thousands of others have conducted the scientific experiment of replacing PC's, outlets, and/or cables and expereinced an observable, and repeated result, whose, experience has greater validity? The one who lectures from the lab table, or the one who conducted the experiment, and observed the results.