Do power cords really matter?

Thanks to PsychicAnimal and Bob Bundus, i just snagged a handy piece of AC related test equipment off of Ebay. You plug it into the wall ( courtesy of a power cord with an IEC jack ) and it gives you three distinct views of your AC signal via an o'scope ( o'scope not included but i have a few ). Not only can you check to see if your 60 Hz sine wave is symmetrical or how much distortion it has riding on it, you can also check for common mode noise, noise between either the hot to ground or neutral to ground, etc...

It can do all of this simultaneously if you have a scope with enough inputs or multiple scopes. One can literally watch the changes in AC noise levels, small spikes and surges, etc... as they occur. I've been doing this for the last two days while at work and it has been pretty interesting to say the least. This should be an even greater help to me once i finally start testing PC, PLC's and noise filters.

My business partner, who is a "non-audiophile" and scoffs at the things that we "tweakaholics" do, was so intrigued by this device ( along with the Audioprism Noise Sniffers and Quiet Lines that i showed him ), that he "snagged" them from me for the long Memorial Day week-end. He wants to check out the AC in his house as he's been having a lot of interference on his Amateur radio gear lately. I'm sure that he'll be experimenting with his HT system also since he's got all the "goodies" to do so now. Hopefully, he'll see the value in working with "tweaks" and become more interested in such things. I could surely use the added "brain capacity" that he could offer when it comes to doing some of the testing / designing that i want to do in the near future. Sean
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Good to know you like your new toy...I was going to buy it but realized you'd get the most out of it. Bob Bundus had told me they use one where he works, so when I saw it on eBay I knew what it was. From what you're saying, it could be possible to feed this to a computer and be able to plot differences between power cords and other components, as well. Excellent.

Huh? Funny that I read this thread. I just went through the power cable question myself. I'm sure a bunch of you will tell me I'm crazy. But you can read the letter ( slightly altered to protect the innocent ) that I wrote to the company that made the power cord. They didn't write me a response to my letter as of yet, but I'm sure their swamped with all the orders their getting. The letter follows........

Funny thing though.... One of my audiophile friends ( who has 25+ years experience in sales ) recently got a job at a local store. So I took your cable to his store to see what he thought of it. Since we were at an audio store their were plenty of other power cable brands lying around as well. The first thing out of his mouth when he saw me was " It's all a bunch of nonsense, people looking for away to get your money. As long as you are getting good current to your equipment the size or kind of the cord doesn't matter "

I of course challenged him to prove his point, which he did. We spent 5 hours ( using the exact same equipment ) trying different cords, in different ways. He also ( by the way ) agreed with the theory that I told you. If you do intend to only change 1 cord, change the one to the power conditioner ( from the wall ) Well we did find that the best sonic improvement was by changing the cord to the power conditioner. But we also found that we gained a significant sonic difference ( money wise ) by making our own cord, which cost us about 25 bucks! ( his cost ) Remember, this freshly made cord had absolutely no burn in time. We came to the conclusion that basically what most of the so called " High End " cords were doing was altering the sound. You know, a little more bass here, or a little more treble there. Kind of like different tubes will alter the sound of a system. Of all the cords we listened too, I found an old Shunyata Sidewinder to be most to my liking, which my friend gave to me ( since he didn't carry the brand, and he only gave the customer $25 trade in for. )

Is there a perfectly neutral power cord? I don't think so. But then what is neutral? I mean really, does anything sound like a live Acoustic performance?

BTW, check out this guy's website, he is real down to earth and blows away a lot of nonsense in the audio world. http://www.audioperfectionist.com

Conclusion, Most likely I will never own a cord that costs over the $$$ that I paid for each of your cords. Especially since I now know how to make my own. And I really don't see the advantage to owning a more expensive cord. There are plenty of ways to tweak a system without having a cord that is the size of a boa constrictor.

Thank you for all your time.

Interesting question with the normal two sides of opinions with the responses.

On the one side you have the "does not make a difference" who has given it the hours of listening and has determined that there is little to no difference. Since this type of person has never been exposed to interconnects and speaker cable that sounds better than lamp cord it isn't much of a surprise that the systems they listen to power cords in won't reveal the type of change that happens with power cords.

The person who has heard distint and not subtle changes with power cords has probably had an exposure to i/c's and speaker cable that made quite a difference to the system and moved on to trying power cords. In a system tuned to a level of resolution that reveals the finer levels of detail power cords make an incredible difference.

If you listen to some power cords and can't hear much if any differences don't jump into making your mind up that they aren't worth spending money on, find out what your system is lacking that keeps it from showing you the differences they are capable of making. If you are going to jump on any of the opinions offered in response to a question like you asked use your head to tell you whether or not the guys hearing a difference have arrived at that opinion through their ability to be fooled into believing they heard a difference or actually did, or the ones who say they have definitively determined PC's make no difference because they didn't hear it, or they have not been exposed to a high enough resolution (due to their limited cable exposure) to be able to hear it.

It comes down to whether you are going to be satisfied with believing you have arrived at a high resolution or actually have it in the end. If you can be happy thinking you can get the best with inferior power cords more power to you.

Don't give up on them until you can hear the difference, being able to hear it is where it's at.

Yes, I do believe that power cords can give audible differences and also improvements, but I think some people exaggerate the importancy of power cords with regard to audio systems. You must not forget that in the 1960's and early 1970's "audiophiles" were listening to equipment that were using ordinary lampcords as power cords. Albeit this "lacking" of exotic power cords many systems sounded very good and musical. That is the most important thing: a system should sound musical. I don't give a damm to hyperdetail, "extended" reverberation tail of musical instruments and voices and ambience retrieval to the nth degree. What I want is music.

Chris