ABX testing with AQ Dragon power cords
I was talking to my dealer about how good the system sounds that he sold me. I mentioned that I had tried some new speaker/interconnect cables from a local amp/cable manufacturer & both I and the company boss agreed that there was little discernible sound difference between his cables & mine. He couldn’t understand why. He also told me that my room acoustics were amazing, top notch. He’d like me to bring my cables (& his) to his listening room & we’ll compare there. That’s for next week.
My dealer said that in his 40 years this has never happened & he was ready to rise to the challenge. He said he would send me a couple of AQ Hurricane power cords to try on my amp/pre and I’d be amazed. I said why bother, send some Dragons. He told me to connect them to my amp & preamp & I should be amazed within 10 seconds of comparing. Today I received a Dragon HC & Source power cord. I listened to some music I’m very familiar with through my Lumin T3 playing FLAC files from the attached USB. Then I swapped the amp & pre to the Dragons and listened to the same songs. No difference that I could tell. So I redid the test, one song at a time, switching back & forth. Still no difference.
I invited two neighbors over (separately) and asked them to look at my FLAC library & choose a song that they knew well. I played that for them with both sets of power cords. One said he couldn’t hear any difference between the two. The other said that one (mine) sounded like it had slightly more treble, the other (Dragon) sounded like more bass. I played a third version (turned out it was mine but he didn’t know) and he said that was the bass version. He was wrong & admitted that the differences were so small that he really couldn’t choose between the two.
I called my dealer & he asked if the difference was earth shattering. I told him no & he asked how that was possible when he just sent similar cables to another customer last week with a similarly priced system as mine & that guy said that the SQ improved 50% and was ecstatic. I said that that guy must have decided already that he was going to buy them and determined that for that money they must improve the sound. My dealer said that either my ears are those a near dead 95 year old or his last 40 years experience have been a sham. I suggested that he was selling & demoing a product to people that had a propensity to believe it worked & therefore it worked for them. I offered to have him drive here (4 hour drive) and listen for himself & I’ll swap cables while his mind is blown. We may get there yet.
I hesitate to post a photo of my listening room as experience tells me that those that are strong proponents of cables will pick it apart and blame a myriad of other crap rather than recognizing that the 3 of us heard no difference on a high resolving system situated in a room would good acoustics... but here goes.
McIntosh MC462/C2700, Pure Fidelity Harmony TT, Gold Note PH-10/PSU-10 phono stage, Lumin T3/Sbooster, Sonus Faber Amati G5 speakers, Sonus Faber Gravis V sub.
dwcda, Do you think if you pull the speakers out further into the room you would then hear a difference? I love SF speakers but I think they're too close to the front wall, if you go to the CARDAS site you can plug in the width of your room into their formula and it will tell you how far away from the front wall and the sidewall the speaker should be, When I did that my sound stage just opened up incredibly. |
@zuesman The front edge of the speaker is 4' from the wall. I've tried other positions and this was the best for me. There is a 7" monster bass trap behind each speaker and a 17" square soffit trap in the corner. The soundstage is great. |
I know it’s your room and tastes, but I agree with @zuesman that those speakers look like they’re begging to be another 6” - 12” or so into the room and maybe a little closer together as well (obviously you’d increase toe in a bit as well when pulling them out). They’re far too close to being in the corners for my liking even with the bass traps and just look like they need more room to breathe to fully open up. I’d definitely give that a try if you haven’t already and hey, unlike almost everything else in this expensive hobby it’s free! Just my $0.02 FWIW. |
