Interesting link on hifi stuff (2)

Seandtaylor, While I tend to agree that theory should be relevant in analyzing certain aspects of audio, my experience has been otherwise. As an example some theorists will say that a power cord brings ac to your component. How can this possibly affect the sound. Who knows, but it does. To a large degree I might add. There are so many things that engineers have tried to convince me that can't possibly make a difference in audio. Ultimately things like cables, transports, power supplies, parts quality etc.etc. do make a huge difference. To dismiss this fact leads me to believe that the system used to evaluate and make such claims is not very revealing.
His article seems more like his experience or opinions with a tiny bit of electrical engineering thrown in to substantiate his arguments. That is his opininon. I can respect that. I have mine also. I guess that is what makes this hobby so interesting is that not everyone hears or cares about the same things. Happy listening.

TWL : agree ... but I'd like to think that we're in the business of critiquing such web pages, not trashing them. In general I find your posts very interesting and I'm quite keen to listen to a low power valve amp with high-efficiency full range drivers (my system is Spica Angelus w/solid state), since I have never had the time or money to play with valves/lowthers. However there are a couple of salient point in that chap's web page so I thought I'd draw them out.

JCAudio. I have never experimented with power cords, and I expect that whether they change the sound of a system is heavily dependant on how transparent the system is. My system may or may not benefit, so I'll try one someday. That said, I think that the effects of RFI, inductance, capacitance, and the filtering of noise which the component drives back out onto the power supply (particularly cheap CD players !) are all factors which could cause a power cord to make an audible difference, and which should be measurable. I'm interested in the postings of P. Qvortrup, since he raises issues I'd never really considered with respect to impedance matching, valve amplification, DAC filtering. However I respect that he raises these issues in a scientific way, pointing to physical, measurable effects.

I am very very skeptical of ANY product that does not explain the physical phenomena in its marketing and I'm convinced that there's plenty of snake oil and fairy dust out there, but equally there are plenty of real second-order effects, not immediately obvious to the pure theorist. I am interested in trying to separate the two, because my budget is very limited, and I don't enjoy being parted from large amounts of cash !

One of the problems I have with web sites and articles such as this, is that they portray the audiophile as a sap, who is just waiting for the next magic trick to sink his hard earned money into. I have found that much the opposite is true. The audiophile is generally an intelligent and informed consumer, and knowledgeable about the subject at hand. Quite often he is not rich, and is very interested in getting good value for his dollar. I can't think of anyone here on this site that would pay good money for a power cord upgrade, if they honestly couldn't hear the difference. So, my point is, that these people are actually "trashing" us. They consider us deluded, obsessive lunatics. I resent that.

Hi Sean,
Are you saying that if they are not measurable and scientific that our ears are wrong or the findings irrelevant?
I am not a engineer. I am and have been a avid audiophile for 32 years. While I can't explain why power cords make a difference I know they do. Even on the same cd player 9 different cords will probably sound different in every case. In regrads to cheap cd players causing the change from power cords I find the reverse to be true. The better the components the more pronounced the differences.
I just tried new power cords tonight on a system I am intimately familiar. The bass was all but gone. It could be break in. Can you measure break in on a component? I encourage you to try some different power cords, speaker cables etc. Try to measure any difference then use your ears. Did you know most Sony receivers measure better than most of the high end equipment available. Specs mean very little if anything to me. That is just my opinion. I am not trying to take any of your money. Happy Listening (measuring):)

JCAudio .. no I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that if you can't immediately explain why your ears hear a difference it's because your theory is not good enough.
Take an example ... digital cables. Basic theory says it's just ones and zeros, and that, so long as the cable is not so poor as to cause the two to be mistaken by the DAC then you'll hear no difference.
But we do hear a difference.
So the more advanced theory looks at the eye pattern of the signal, considers jitter, cable bandwidth (limited by capacitance and inductance), RFI, and impedance matching, and shows that the optimal eye pattern (which really means low jitter in lay terms) is actually quite hard to achieve, and will certainly alter the overall sound.
So I think you misunderstood me. I am not saying that we should measure audio by specs .. of course not, we should measure it by grins :-). That said it is important to strive to understand what are the phenomena at work that put the grins on our faces, so we can make those grins wider and available at lower prices.
I'm an engineer, but I'm a practical engineer. Engineering is about optimal performance at the right price. A wonderful sounding HiFi that costs $100,000 is about as much use as a chocolate teapot to the general population. A slightly less wonderful sounding system, that still sounds very good, but retails for $1000 is going to bring much more pleasure to many more people. However it is also a much more challenging engineering task, only accomplished when one has a very sound technical understanding of what makes a hifi work well.