Blind Power Cord Test & results

Many people who consider aftermarket AC cords snake oil are those that cannot (or will not) justify the difference the investment makes.

If that is the argument, I am in complete agrement. Many tweaks in high end audio are a poor value when compared to better speakers or improving the source.

However, once a system contains all the best components, with very little left to be accomplished, aftermarket AC cords as well as other premium tweaks can make a significant improvement.

As stated countless times in these forums, LONG TERM LISTENING is the only way to determine if your system is right for you musically. Short listening sessions tend to confuse and do little to establish if the change provides long term satisfaction.

Best to get a test cord, install it on a piece in your system that is MOST likely to benefit, usually the amp or source. Then, over time determine if that provides better sound. Best to listen for a week, then swap back to the original cord and see if you "miss" the upgrade.

Be honest with yourself and don't be concerned with what you think your going to hear or what anyone else has told you.

If in the end your system does not provide better performance with that aftermarket cord, replace it with another and do the test again, or put the stock cord back in the system and forget about it.

In my system the results are so drastic that a single pass between two cords is all that is required. I have however, sat in front of systems that responded very poorly or not at all. It's like everything else in life, you have to work at it to determine the answer.

Also, this is from the web site you linked to, appears they had concerns about the validity of the test due to time constraints, same as I suggested (above).

There were several acknowledged weaknesses to the test. The number of participants and trials was not very high. Most people sat far from the sweet spot. The ideal situation, which would have allowed participants to audition A and B more than once before trying to identify X, was not possible because the length of time it would have taken to do so would have burned everyone out. (Many members of the second group said they were fried by the time 3:30 PM rolled around.) Switchers failed to turn on both amps three times, and Baci Brown of canine renown further interrupted the flow twice with scratching and barking at outside sounds and a perceived need to pee it all out in the yard. Finally, and perhaps of greatest significance, the time it took to switch cords was longer than the generally accepted 5 second length of human auditory memory. This reduced what Manny terms “the differential sharpness of perception” of participants.

There is, of course, no way to know if a maximum 5 second delay between auditioning A, B, and X would have made a statistical difference. In fact, there is no way to know if we would have scored better if every possible scenario we could think of was exactly as we wished it to be in the best of all possible worlds.

I suggest you test this in your own system and forget about what other write, including myself.

I have not experimented with power cords myself, however, what the conclusions determined is that "We simply failed to prove that differences can be detected to a statistically significant degree using a blind ABX protocol"
I have always been skeptical that audible differences could be distinguished between power cords. There's simply too many other variables when it comes to the delivery of power to the component. However, having heard the same results regarding ABX tests involving amps and interconnects, and, having myself been able to distinguish differences between these components in my own experimentation, I would certainly not rule anything out until I performed some actual experiments myself. I think that the logic in ABX testing is seriously flawed and would tend to reject any results from such tests.

Sorry for my rant here, but you guys kill me with the lack of links. The directions on how to post a link is found directly under the data input area and is labeled "No html, but you may use markup tags". Clicking on that will show you exactly how to post different types of links.

If you are in the middle of a post and forget how to post a link, you can even click on the directions below you post, see how it is done and then click your web browser's "back" button to return to your post as it was. You can do this as many times as it takes with no fear of losing the data that you've already entered.

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_11_4/feature-article-blind-test-power-cords-12-2004.html

Other than that, i've done testing where the differences in power cabling was both highly audible and measurable. The fact that the differences were so audibly noticeable was what caused me to take test measurements. The only thing altered during the test was one power cord as fed to a digital source component. The frequency response showed measurable deviations both in the warmth region and in the extreme treble region. Other than that, i'm quite certain that spectral analysis would show differences in the noise floor of a component when comparing "optimized" power cords vs more conventional designs. Sean
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Two seniors have already said it better than I, but I simply would like to add that different results will ocur with different gear.

A number of years back I had "stock" Meridian power cord from some Meridian gear that I owned and I had this power cord connected to a Moscode amp; I replaced it with a LAT Intl. power cord, the difference was immediate and without doubt. I later used the same power cord on a Mark Levinson No.383 and heard no difference when compared to its stock power cord.

Hello,

I have to believe that Albert's long-term-listening procedure is what is needed because I went back and forth last week between NBS Statement and PS Audio Statement Extreme power cords on a pair of CAT JL-3 Signature amps. There is a HUGE difference in retail cost of these two products.

Each time I thought there was a little more resolution with the NBS in the decay of cymbols, but switching back to the PS Audio and the decay was so natural as well. There was no discernible tonal differences and no other attributes caught my attention as have sonic differences.

Either the CAT amps don't benefit from this due to their design or I just need to listen with one set of cords for a week and try another in a week or so. And then I will try this whole process again with the power cords on a pair of recently acquired Soundlab A1s against the stock power cords.

Often we want "better" products to bring on improvements but if we can not hear such differences for whatever reason, then Albert said it best, "forget about it".

John