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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. 
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xyobgyn's avatar
xyobgyn
42 posts
 
Fascinating to read this. Appreciate many of the posts. I will admit bias and not having tested since I believe so strongly in the power of suggestion. 

But two things stand out.

First, a poster quoted ARC, a respected audio company and unless I am mistaken twisted the quote badly to suit this discussion. The paragraph he quoted from ARC referenced specifically speaker wire and interconnects. Not power cords. 

Second, a very basic concept (in my opinion).

If one were to grant that a PC can change the resulting sound of a system.... one has to posit that there is intrinsically “something” we are essentially conditioning or altering coming in from the wall current.   I think this argues for power conditioners, not PC that “sort of, kind of”, function as conditioners. 

I also find it hard to believe that all the people who perceive this improvement believe that the IEC connector on their unit has the optimal spec as well as optimal wire internally passing the current to the next destination. After all, we couldn’t trust the company to supply a really good sounding PC, and many of the same people swap in special wall outlets.

But all this belief on display that a PC can be heard, does make me suspect that there are some people where their systems would benefit from a power conditioner of some sort.   Maybe.



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jafreeman's avatar
jafreeman
689 posts
 
"First, a poster quoted ARC, a respected audio company and unless I am mistaken twisted the quote badly to suit this discussion. The paragraph he quoted from ARC referenced specifically speaker wire and interconnects. Not power cords."  xyobgyn

Yes, that was me, and yes, you are mistaken.  See my subsequent post on the Sainline AC cords ARC has used at the factory to test their designs. Look at the Sainline Systems site for that verification by Warren Gehl, chief listener for ARC product design and every piece that leaves the factory.  He uses high-quality AC cords in the ARC factory listening room!  
jafreeman's avatar
jafreeman
689 posts
 
"If one were to grant that a PC can change the resulting sound of a system.... one has to posit that there is intrinsically “something” we are essentially conditioning or altering coming in from the wall current." xyobgyn

Yes, that "something" IS the electrical current that courses through your system and wires and into your speakers. Upon that current resides the audio signal you like to hear. If the current is kept free of noise and distortion, you hear more of the signal. An EE may say the current has been filtered through many phases of circuit and the AC cord does not matter. Empirically, those of us who are not EE’s are experiencing that high-quality AC cords, interconnects, speaker wires and fundamentally-important isolation transformers are bringing sound quality to much higher levels of enjoyment. At the expense of sounding naive, I have concluded that there must be a burden of distortion that must be shared by the audio signal all the way through the system. Otherwise, an AC cord would not matter, but it does.
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