Why Power Cables Affect Sound


I just bought a new CD player and was underwhelmed with it compared to my cheaper, lower quality CD player. That’s when it hit me that my cheaper CD player is using an upgraded power cable. When I put an upgraded power cable on my new CD player, the sound was instantly transformed: the treble was tamed, the music was more dynamic and lifelike, and overall more musical. 

This got me thinking as to how in the world a power cable can affect sound. I want to hear all of your ideas. Here’s one of my ideas:

I have heard from many sources that a good power cable is made of multiple gauge conductors from large gauge to small gauge. The electrons in a power cable are like a train with each electron acting as a train car. When a treble note is played, for example, the small gauge wires can react quickly because that “train” has much less mass than a large gauge conductor. If you only had one large gauge conductor, you would need to accelerate a very large train for a small, quick treble note, and this leads to poor dynamics. A similar analogy might be water in a pipe. A small pipe can react much quicker to higher frequencies than a large pipe due to the decreased mass/momentum of the water in the pipe. 

That’s one of my ideas. Now I want to hear your thoughts and have a general discussion of why power cables matter. 

If you don’t think power cables matter at all, please refrain from derailing the conversation with antagonism. There a time and place for that but not in this thread please. 
128x128mkgus
You can lead an audiophile to a set of cables, but you can't make him listen. 🙉
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@prof another excellent post! I would say the measurements that show a change to the output signal don’t exist because they don’t exist. 
 And I think some manufacturers say to use the best cabling because they don’t want to alienate potential buyers. And what does that mean exactly? To me the best interconnects is a Beldon purchased for $50.  If they said cables don’t matter and you’re an idiot if you think so, then if you believed they did you wouldn’t buy their product. 
@analogluvr


And I think some manufacturers say to use the best cabling because they don’t want to alienate potential buyers.



Exactly. Some manufacturers surely believe in the use of high end AC cables.  But some are obviously making concessions to the audiophile market.  I've seen speaker designers say if they had their way, they'd be selling fully active speakers, but the audiophile market just doesn't want them because audiophiles like to play with amps, cables etc.  So...they sell what the market wants.   I remember a number of manufacturers of gear say the reason they don't use hard wired AC cables isn't because they think AC cables make a difference, but rather that they would simply be cutting away part of their market - the sizable portion of audiophiles who insist they need to be able to swap in expensive AC cables.


ARC is simply advising to use high-quality connections to match their high-quality parts, hook-up wire, etc.  By not doing so, you are dragging down the performance  of your expensive gear to a cheapo level, I hate to tell you.  Sorry, not sorry.