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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
audiom3
152 posts
 

@roxy54 lol

moto_man
363 posts
 

I'm surprised at the amount of derision and hostility heaped on the OP here.  I am on the side of "power cords make a difference."  Why? Because I hear a difference.  I disagree that having the neighbors over for a listen disqualifies them because they are not "audiophiles."  if something sounds better, you shouldn't need to be an audiophile to discern the difference.  You just need to listen more to the two components for a while so that you hear each one enough to compare what usually are small, <15% differences.  Whether that difference is worth the money is a personal choice.  However, I do call BS on the customer who allegedly thought that there was a 50% improvement in his system by adding power cables.  I just can't believe that, even if he was comparing Dragons to stock power cables.  But to each his own.

BTW, very nice music room!  

uncledemp
779 posts
 

@dwcda 

Nice setup, you should be very proud of it. 

Hard to believe most are men on this forum. 
 

 

tubehead120's avatar
tubehead120
35 posts
 

I run a DAC3 into Pass XA100.5s driving MBL 126s.  I've swapped dozens of cables in and out.  Except for low gauge power cords (thick conductors) helping the bass I've only heard very minor tone changes, the kind I get by swapping capacitors inside an amp.  Not better or worse, just maybe a hair different.  It gets boring.  

You guys have way too much time and money...

ahuvia
17 posts
 

I started a huge brouhaha with a post on this topic some time ago. If you're curious you can find it easily by searching for my prior posts.   

   I'm a consumer psychologist and a marketing professor who studies how people make subjective judgments about what sounds, tastes, looks, or feels better. The data on this are resoundingly clear. The only way to have confidence that a difference you are perceiving between X and Y—whether X and Y are power cords or anything else—is through a blind comparison where the person making the judgment does not know what they are listening to.

   There are two very important things to know about this issue. First, the issue goes beyond confirmation bias (biasing one's judgments in favor of what one already believes to be true). Many people think that the issue is simply one of confirmation bias, so if they don't have a prior belief that power cords either do or do not make a difference in sound quality, they will approach the issue open-mindedly, and, therefore, blind listening is not needed. This makes total sense, but alas, is incorrect. If your brain knows what it is listening to, it will bias the results in all kinds of ways, even if you don't have a prior opinion and are honestly doing your best to make an accurate judgment.

   Second, and this may be the most important and interesting point, if you know what you are listening to you genuinely will hear a difference. It's just that the difference is generated by your brain rather than the power cords. Here is what we used to think and after I’ll share what the research now shows.

 

WRONG outdated model:

(1) the stereo creates vibrations in the air.

(2) these vibrations reach your ear.

(3) your brain translates these vibrations into a sonic experience.

(4) your prior beliefs about power cords bias your judgment of this subjective experience and bias what you tell other people about it.

 

New, more CORRECT model:

(1) the stereo creates vibrations in the air,

(2) these vibrations reach your ear,

(3) your brain combines the information it receives from the ear with models about how the world works and motivations about how to be socially successful to actively construct your sonic experience.  So, the sounds you hear in your head have already been influenced by your knowledge of what you are listening to.

(4) You judge whether power cords influence the sound quality and share that judgment with other people. You can do this in a biased way or in a more open-minded and honest way.

 

The important point is that knowing which power cord you are listening to will bias you at stage 3 and stage 4. If you're committed to an honest, open-minded approach, this will reduce the bias at stage 4, but the bias at stage 3 will still be there. The only way to remove the bias at stage 3 is to do a blind listening. And the bias at stage 3 will happen even if you don’t have a specific belief about power cords. Your brain will introduce biases at stage 3 for a whole host of other reasons that are too complicated to get into in this post.

 

At the time of my previous post on this issue I searched the Internet to find examples of blind listening tests using different power cords. I was only able to find a few examples, but all of them provided strong evidence that power cords make zero difference in what people hear if the people don't know what power cord they are listening to. This does not mean that all stereo sound the same or that spending money on stereo equipment is always a waste. There are many ways that you can spend money improving the sound of your stereo that hold up in blind listening tests. But from the evidence available last time I checked, spending money on power cords is not a good way to improve the sound quality of your system.

 

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