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The Truth About Power Cords and there "Real" Price to Performance

This is a journey through real life experiences from you to everyone that cares to educate themselves. I must admit that I was not a believer in power cords and how they affect sound in your system. I from the camp that believed that the speaker provided 75% of the sound signature then your source then components but never the power cord. Until that magic day I along with another highly acclaimed AudioGoner who I will keep anatomist ran through a few cables in quite a few different systems and was "WOWED" at what I heard. That being said cable I know that I am not the only believer and that is why there are so many power cord/cable companies out there that range from $50 to 20-30 thousand dollars and above. So I like most of you have to scratch my head and ask where do I begin what brand and product and what should i really pay for it?

The purpose of this discussion to get some honest feed back on Price to Performance from you the end user to us here in the community.

Please fire away!


 


blumartini
thyname's avatar
thyname
3,107 posts
 
I am beginning to question the very concept of the ABX test. Is it a real thing? 

Before you get upset and slam your keyboard (yes, I am talking to you the mighty keyboard-warrior), this is just a joke, but a tongue-in-chick joke nonetheless...

Isn't the "ABX test" something that the "slayers of snake oil" throw in your face every time someone shares his / her experience of anything in audio making a difference? More often than not, without even doing any such tests themselves. 

It's beginning to look like it. To the point of me starting to detest is, as only those guys use it, in every audio forum they can find.
atdavid
736 posts
 
This is such a grossly inaccurate statement as to call it bubkiss. While ideally the test would be double blind, that is not always a viable thing to do. There are two biases, subject bias and observation bias. Single blind removes subject bias, which is usually the dominant bias. While double blind is the "gold standard", single bias is still used as it eliminate subject bias, and provides significantly more statistically relevant results. To suggest this is no more valuable than sighted tests shows a gross ignorance w.r.t. this type of testing.

cleeds2,587 posts11-25-2019 12:46pm
One just needs a friend that switches cables (or lies and tells you that he did), so you don’t know what you are listening to. No huge study design, no exhaustive testing procedures, and the perfect testing system and environment .. your system, your room.
What you describe isn’t double-blind and has no control for the tester’s bias. So the results would be essentially useless, and certainly not scientific.
Anyone who tells you there is no value in doing a test this way is lying to you.
There’s no more value to the test you described than there is to the sort of fully sighted tests that you repeatedly assail so passionately.

atdavid
736 posts
 
I am really starting to detest it, these guys who think they have superhuman hearing and that they alone , and their close-knit group are so superhuman that they are immune to bias that afflicts pretty much 100% of the population. They post on virtually every audio forum they can, their superhuman hearing and total absence of bias ....

thyname475 posts11-25-2019 1:27pm

It’s beginning to look like it. To the point of me starting to detest is, as only those guys use it, in every audio forum they can find.

mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,782 posts
 
these guys who think they have superhuman hearing and that they alone , and their close-knit group are so superhuman that they are immune to bias that afflicts pretty much 100% of the population
It is a dialogue of the deaf...Nobody has ever argued to own superhuman hearings...But attributing that hability to someone and attacking him after that for being so is an interesting tactic indeed...

All of us have accumulated in a long self educating listening history, an additive number of creative and negative bias...This is not only normal, this is impossible to erase completely all our bias, there is no absolutely objective listening without bias at all...This is a fiction...We can become conscious of some of our bias for sure...And that is science...

This is not superhuman hearing...I only wanted to point this out, for making things discussed clearer and not succumb to dialogue without compromising and without listening to each other...
atdavid
736 posts
 
When you have no idea what you are listening to, then you remove all bias w.r.t. that product you are evaluating. I may not be sure, but some of what you have alluded to as bias in your last post, I think many would call preference. That is much different from removing knowledge of changes and evaluating with nothing but our ears.

I can't think of any other pursuit where a group of people fight so feverishly to maintain their ability to be bias influenced in the outcome. Anyone who thinks they will not be biased by knowing the device being tested/evaluated is, frankly, delusional. I am sorry to be harsh, but no one is immune to it. I don't understand why people keep insisting that they are.
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