So, it’s treason, then….
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.
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- 173 posts total
@dwcda Thank you for your post and your reasoned responses to several hostile and incredulous responses. You and I share a similar philosophy about the audible effects of cables and cords. I've tried to hear the difference in interconnects and power cords at least a dozen times over the years. So far I can't tell one from the other. I am not saying that someone else cannot hear the difference. If they believe that one cable has more detail or better soundstage than another cable then that is their truth. Due to my life sciences background when I do a comparison between components or cables I try to reduce the influence of expectation-bias as much as possible. I have two DACs, an SACD player, and a CD player. Using Blue Jeans cables as a control, I can compre the sound of two components to get a baseline. My Berkeley DAC (using the SACD as a transport) and my Marantz KI Ruby sound very similar playing a standard CD. When I replace the interconnects in one component I can compare the sound against a standard (the other component). Lots of people on the forums have said that silver cables have a distinctive sound. So I bought a pair of AudioQuest silver RCA cables to see if I could hear a difference. I left the cables in for several months so they could "burn in" and I could compare them every so often to see if I could hear any of the sonic effects that others describe. Short answer - no. AFAIK, there is no ABX or double blind test that shows that audiophiles (or normal people for that matter) can tell the differnce between interconnects or power cords. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of tests that show the opposite - that if the listener does't know the brand or story of the cord he/she is listening to, they can't tell cables apart. If anyone is aware of a scientifically rigorous blind test that shows that listeners, even trained listeners, can hear the difference between cables please let me know. What is interesting about this debate is that merely reporting that one cannot hear a difference between cables brings forth a surprising degree of defensiveness. It's similar to the response you get if you challenge someone's religion. If I understand the OP correctly, he is not saying that cable differences do not exist. He is just stating that using the methods, materials, and conditions he has at his disposal, he can't hear a difference. That makes two of us. |
I've moved the speakers out & closer a bit. The center of the speaker is now 55" from the back wall. The speaker centers are 82" apart and the listening position is 82" from the center of each speaker. I listened for awhile & I do like the sound so I'll keep it like this for awhile & play some records. Time will tell.
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Under normal circumstances we shouldn’t expect to hear differences between these cables, so I don’t think looking for a reason is appropriate here. Looking for a reason when a difference is perceived makes more sense. If a way is found to make a perceivable difference happen, then we’d like to know what kinds of things were changed, and it’d be interesting to see if measurements can pick up on something, and maybe we’ll solve a mystery. Room looks nice! How resolving it actually is I can't say with any confidence by looking at it. You could test that too, using REW. You can also listen to bass and lower midrange clarity using a gated burst test like the MATT:
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- 173 posts total