Why Power Cables Affect Sound

@ mkgus OP

This may help you to better understand "the why do".
https://www.gcaudio.com/tips-tricks/why-power-cables-make-a-difference/
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@mkgus,

I think nonoise is getting upset with you because you are denying his very reality without having any experience with it via sitting in a arm chair 500 miles away removed from his situation and then going on to cite how fallable the mind is: it’s borderline insulting.

No mature, reasonable person should find facts insulting. Including facts about being human.

Ever seen optical illusions? They show us ways in which our perception can be fooled. Are you, or nonoise, "insulted" by being shown how such perception is fallible? Would it make sense to be "insulted" when being shown a fact about human perception?

Scientists often use double-blind studies. I’ve mentioned before: my son is involved in a double blind study for an allergy treatment. Both my son and the doctor were "blinded" to whether my son was receiving a placebo or the actual drug. Why? Because it’s so well known how human bias works in confounding the results. If the experimenters know which people are on the real drug, they can subtly influence the outcome of the results in ways they aren’t even themselves aware of. We know simply giving someone a fake pill can produce perceptions of results if people think it may be something that affects their system. In fact, as is often the case, in this study some people had what they took to be allergic reactions to the placebo....which is why double-blinding is used to reduce the "noise" of bias effects in the results.

Now, this is simply based on what we know about human bias and perception. Should the doctors have felt insulted to be blinded during the research? Of course not; they are mature adults and simply understand they are fallible in ways that they ought to control for.Should we have been scandalized to have been blinded to whether we were on the placebo or real drug as in "How DARE you think I can’t KNOW whether this drug is working or not. Don’t you TRUST ME?"

Of course not. We’d be bad subjects to be so irrational.

And yet, if you simply remind some audiophiles that we are all human, and we know that humans have biases that can confound our inferences, then they feel scandalized, insulted. It’s not even saying their perception and results ARE in error. It’s only to suggest that, given the facts of bias effects, that it COULD POSSIBLY be in error. And even the suggestion their perception COULD POSSIBLY be in error is seen as an occasion for being insulted, and hurling back insults.  Against all scientific evidence to the contrary, apparently these audiophiles can be confident they are never in error and no perceptual biases are operating.

Do you see the problem here at all?


I have been very careful to say, explicitly, that I’m not claiming from my own results "AC cables make no sonic difference" and I have NEVER claimed that nonoise or you or anyone else DID NOT hear a REAL sonic difference. I have only raised the issue of how difficult it can be to get the bottom of many of the more audiophile/tweaky claims due to the bias effects we all suffer from. And given this, it’s reasonable to ask "how do we deal with trying to untangle real audible differences from imagined audible differences?"

Why can’t a mature, calm conversation be had about this? There is no reason whatsoever to take such questions as insults.


BTW, as to how I listen to my system: I listen from my sweet spot, often lights out, truly involved in the music and sound quality. I’m as obsessive as any audiophile in that regard.
Cheers.

@elizabeth I am glad to hear you admit that. Especially from someone experienced as you and from one who also, according to your previous posts, is very open minded about tweaks and improvements.

That mirrors my (limited) experience as well.

Now, you may be able to get "in the zone" and very accurately assess SQ differences. I have a much harder time with this unless I am doing immediate A/B testing which usually requires someone to help switching from one source to another. 

I have a much harder time, for instance, listening to a whole song or CD and then listening to it again after a change and being able to quantify what I've heard. I might be able to say there is a difference but have a harder time saying which is better and sometimes even saying what the exact difference is.

Maybe I'll get better. But until then, me doing a cord test is not likely going to be valuable for me or anyone else.

Not sure that some truly understand the palcebo effect.

The placebo effect can cause real actual measurable change or alterations in the human body. immune response, Herxheimer response, inflammation response, chemical balance response, and more.

So it is impossible to do medical studies and just say ’placebo’. It is far far too complex for that simplicity to exist as most people think it does.

It also means it is not proper or even remotely real to name drop ’palcebo’ into an audio discussion... and consider the case solved in one’s favor...... so that it can be ’justifiably’ used as an axe to attack the understandings and opinions of others. With full clouds of feverish spinning righteousness attached.

To the informed, which sadly, number a frightening few....it shows a notable amount of ignorance of the subject at hand.

Human hearing, for example, is a half in half out consciousness and unconscious affair... that is a variable and hand built..and alterable, shiftable, tunable, in that half-in half-out kind of way.

Which the complexities of placebo, which is directly indicated but misapplied... play in that field and area.

And that's just a minimal (very incomplete) descriptor of the one component of a very complex scenario.