How to A/B Test Power Cables & Interconnects?

Being new you have no way of knowing we have someone here with near zero experience and practical knowledge who nevertheless loves to opine as if he were an expert on every subject imagineable. He doesn’t even know what a ground loop is, couldn’t explain it even if his life depended on it, yet feels compelled to post again and again all the same. Or as he himself woud put it, he feels compelled, obligated and driven to post, state, or say similar nonsense, falsehoods and misinformation, many times, repeatedly, and often.

@millercarbon

Agreed. Thinking isn't all that focused is it.

Skeptical?  Nah.  They work and there is a discernible difference.
All depends on your tastes (like wine, as stated) and budget.

Just switched to streaming. System sounded great. Then I looked at what my installer used for an ethernet connection. It was a basic cable but they said, you don't need anything else.

Had a used SR Atmosphere ( last gen.)  sent out on trial basis and the difference was very, very noticeable. The ethernet cabling draws a lot of skeptics BUT I found it the best $350. I have spent.

Cables, power cords are part of a system. They work but not cheap tweaks and can become a money pit  Good luck.

First, to me, nothing is as valuable as the buyer’s pleasure. Whether pleasure of ownership, pleasure of listening, or pleasure of DIY, it’s your money, so do what you want to with it. Kids jerks? Spend their college fund. No problem from me.

But I do think that you are making choices about how you train your brain. It’s not all about what you buy, it’s what you tell your brain you want to focus on.


Lets say you train your brain to listen for the difference between silver plated interconnects, and braided gold. OK, great. You can hear it. How is that a goal that was worthy of you? Maybe it is.


Point is, a lot of things may not sound different at all. Some may sound different but not better.


Are you setting up your tests to guide your ear/brain mechanism to a happier place? If it takes you 20 hours to find a difference between two products, was that worth while?


If some one were to switch your chosen interconnects with other types, would you know in an hour?

Only you can answer these.


Best,

Erik

My goodness, what a lot of misinformation!

If "auditory memory isn't all that long" then how is it a woman ever remembers what the cry of her baby sounds like? Or since this is mostly guys, I guess whoever believes this has no idea how their car sounds or when it isn't running right. Duh-oh. Nonsense on stilts.

(Not telling anyone they can't hear. Anyone says they can't hear, take them at their word.)

With wiring as with a lot of stuff where you're trying to get at the truth I find it helps to filter, one of the best being, "How does he know what he's talking about?" Everyone has an opinion. But what is it based on? Good to know.

Some people have a wealth of experience. Others, not so much. Mine goes beyond the normal book-reading, even beyond the book-reading of a radiologic technologist (electronics, physics) and well into practical, immediately relevant actual hands- and ears-on experience.

1. Wired circuit breaker panels.
2. Wired listening room, conventionally.
3. Wired listning room, dedicated line but to code.
4. Wired listening room 4 ga.
5. Wired listening room 4 ga 240v with silver step-down transformer to 120v.
6. Cryogenically treated 4 ga circuit.
7. Critically listened to all the above with a pretty damn fine system in a dedicated room acoustically treated over a period of 30 years.

That's the Cliff Notes version. 

The risk of a ground loop comes in when you connect together components that are connected to different outlets. Electric current always takes the path of least resistance. If the resistance to ground is exactly the same on both circuits fine, no problem. But how often is anything ever exactly the same? So you run the risk- not a certainty but exactly what I said the first time, risk- of ground loop hum.

DC offset is a little harder to explain but similar, in that it is a risk not a certainty. Which is why I said you run the risk. And why? See the 7 items above. If there's one thing I'm sure of its that there is no benefit to running more than one circuit for a system. 

When it comes to comparing cables, I've held parties with over a dozen people in the room. Usually only a few audiophiles and mostly just people who enjoy music. One of the best, Caelin (Shunyata Research, that Caelin) came over with some power cords. We would play some music, change a power cord, play some more music. Never once did we play the same track twice. Hard to think of anything more boring or likely to make one lose interest, just the opposite of what you want in a comparison. Never once did we have any one of the dozen or more not notice and appreciate the differences. Being non-audiophiles they don't know the lingo but believe me they are sure they hear the difference and they know what they like.

As reprehensible as it is to remove informative and useful information just because some snowflake got their panties in a twist, it winds up being rather self-defeating when the subsequent response is even more withering.

So there you go.