Blind Power Cord Test & results

Good posts Drubin. The "which is this" task can be difficult. With it, I would not conclude PCs to be snake oil and would have preferred if the experimenters used two groups, instead of one group given two variables - as in "is there a difference between A and B?"

What is always obvious is that audiophiles in general, unlike the professionals (Pabelson), are emotionally and knowledge-wise unfit to conduct blind testing. Its goal is to eliminate just one variable, but you’d think it was a religion. Personally I don't see why people should use it at the level of the individual consumer to decide the worthiness of each component - what a pain!, - at a larger level, however, which testing never has or will attain in audio, it has merit.

Eliminating variables is a good thing, and is practiced too little in audio, especially audiogon where anyone proclaims “truths” with any measure of experience or knowledge-base.

...not even taking into effect what powering off does to solid state and tube gear for the first few minutes...

That *could* be a major compromise in a cord testing situation... unless one listened for a while to each sample under test.

One has to be intimitaly familiar with all of the gear being used and the recording in order to identify if there has been a change made. Picking specific parts of a song to use as a cue tends to work well, but if one wasn't quite familiar with the song or how it was specifically reproduced on the system to begin with, they would be guessing just like anybody else.

As such, short term listening tests when one is not familiar with the system and / or the recording is next to useless, especially when the differences may be quite subtle. Expecting someone to familiarize themselves with both a song and potentially different types of presentations at the same time is too much to ask simultaneously.

As such, these types of tests are basically set up to produce a negative right from the beginning. The one exception is when you get a highly trained listener with excellent hearing acuity. Even then, they are swimming against the current for the above mentioned reasons. Sean
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Been down this audio road before. The best you can do with an ab power cord test is decide which you prefer, with that particular system, at that time, with that recording. After deciding which cord is preferred, does that mean it will perform similarly with a different system? I don't think so. Excellent hearing acuity is a quantifiable thing like vision acuity. We may both view the same Monet, but see different things, have different impressions, though we pocess the the same visual acuity. The same goes for hearing, as well. I have golden ears. You have golden ears. I'll bet our listening experiences will be disparate enough to make us wonder enough....who ears are more golden?

Warren, what are you talking about? I think you're not paying attention.

Sean, I think you are incorrect to dismiss the process as completely as you appear to be doing, and I'm surprised to read your post. I'll bet that every one of us has heard differences aplenty on other peoples' systems with music they are not familiar with. The panel spent quite a bit of time up front listening to the system, the musical selections, and the two different sets of cords. We could all hear the differences, no problem, until the screens were put up and the test started. (By the way, most of us thought we identified the choices correctly.) The system's owner, who has a great ear and knows his system intimately, fared no better than many of us as far as I know.

We're not talking about Electraglide vs. Elrod here. This was $3 stock vs. Valhalla. I'm still hoping someone can offer a solid, rational explanation for how and why the testing procedure obscures differences.