How any "wall pluggers" are out there?

Lacee,

The entire audiophile culture has to do with direct experience. If it were as easy as comparing data sheets, and if these data sheets really did give you the last word regarding sound quality, then there would really be no reason for anything else in audiophile culture except for differing visual designs to differentiate between tastes. But this is not the case.

Take two violins, a Stradivarius and a Guarnerius del Gesu. Take any audio analysis software you want, with any amount of computing power you want, with any type of input device you want, compare them all, make thousands of graphs of phase response, fourier analysis, wood spectroscopy, laquer analysis; publish all this is a huge encyclopedia of comparative charts, graphs, and tables.

The result is that before listening to the two violins, you will not be able to state your preference in one way or another. You will not draw from such data an emotional response. Indeed, it is questionable even after all of that analysis and even after your direct experience of the sound, whether you will then be able to differentiate between the two violins on paper just looking at the data.

If you are open to this, you get a feeling for the sound of each violin. If you argue that it is just a violin and "what's all the fuss about?", then you will be an outsider looking upon those who have already developed personal experience and an emotional reaction to one or the other sound.

And you will say: "Wake up, people, it is just a piece of wood! Spend your energy on something more substantially important!"

But that is what art is all about -- it is about feeling. For the many people on this earth who have developed a feeling for these fine differences, to them, the concert can mean much more than for someone who has not developed this feeling.

Then you take this violin-loving concert goer into your car and you tell him how nice the paint job is, how you love this 1974 BMW model 2002. He just gets in and tells you where he lives. He doesn't care for the model of the car. But you go on to explain what a feat of engineering it is and what a symbol it is and how much work you've put into it. And he, all the while, is interested only in the sound he heard at the concert.

I'm sure you get the point.

The audiophile culture is all about experience. Many will have become dismayed because they did not hear a difference when swapping cables. But perhaps they were the wrong two cables. There are also many violins in the world which are overpriced. There are just as many cables which are overpriced. I wouldn't even say overpriced. I'd just say that the creator perhaps thinks higher of himself than his talent seems to the listener.

I have heard violins costing very little money, which sounded excpetionally beautiful to my ear. And I've heard violins which cost too much to justify their sound, which was lacking in beauty.

Looking for the scientific reason for art to affect humans is the wrong question altogether. That's like telling your wife you must have sex together tonight because there is scientific reason to believe that this action will enhance your relationship. There is no science here. It is a feeling.

There is no 'scientific reason' to spend money on an artist's work. I don't know if art should be considered merely utilitarian. If so, to me it would seem a very sad world.

If so, we should all run into concert halls all around the world and shout on stage that it is all a waste of time, that we should all be going home, and doing something more scientific.

But think about science: it happens to give people jobs, but the true scientist is the wonderer and the explorer into the yet unknown. And it is as yet not completely known what exactly are the parameters of sound quality. It is very interesting to go deeper, read some theories, run some experiments, and see where it gets you. It turns into a quest for knowledge and experience. This is in effect what science is all about.

I think your last sentence "Make him prove that there is some scientific reason why he would spend more than a few dollars on a power cord" is like telling someone "What's the point of going to the moon when you can see it from here."

If people are looking for adventure, they look for others who are looking for adventure, too. If they are not looking for adventure, they will never find it.

So, really, it is all about experience, and if you are unwilling to partake in this experience, you will not, and it is as simple as that.

Louis Motek

I think the OP has the terminology reversed

Wouldn’t Wall Pluggers be purists?

Sans anything between the esteemed gear and the outlet itself?

Kind of like tree huggers?

I’m sure they would not wish to put anything between their rigs worth thousands of dollars and that pricey 25 cent outlet.

It’s just throwing good money after bad, I say!

In fact their theme song could be?

We don’t need no more expenses
We don’t need no thought control

Hey! Leave them plugs alone!
Yeah! Leave them plugs alone!

All in all, it’s just another plug in the wall.

… or not... just thinking on key.

My initial reaction to this post is that Maybe Lacee should have just asked the simple question whether anyone hears any difference with after market power cables and power conditioners instead of implying that those people that do hear differences are in a different audiophile camp. It almost sounds like the "non wall pluggers" are the purists of the hobby. Tell the truth, Are you "non wall pluggers" using lamp cord on your speakers?

WoW!
Great responses.
Yes I think wall pluggers are purists, the "meat and potatoes" kind of folks and probably are that way in all things in their life.

Maybe I should ask how many wall pluggers own Porsches or Rolex?

But throwing good money at this hobby in a hap hazard way isn't any good either.

Try before you buy, and if the shoe fits wear it and enjoy it if you can afford it.

I like Sufjan Stevens cd, Illinoise.
It's dense and can sound like a bowl of mush on a lot of systems.
But on some systems where the power going into the gear had been "tweaked", some of that wall of mush disappears and you start to more fully enjoy and appreciate all the layers of voice and instruments this fellow puts into a song.

Now nothing is wrong with wall plugging.
Never said there was.
In the beginning I was a wall plugger, most of the non-wallpluggers were too.
But at some point in time they experienced a system that just had more going on than what theirs did.

So it's very hard to go back to wall plugging after you hear what can be accomplished with some attention paid to the electrical signal.
The power cord to your amp is the first thing that your amp sees, and if it can filter out some of the muck that has accumlated( like the mississippi river does on it's journey)from miles of wire then it is doing you a favour.

Unfortunately a lot of the stuff that really works is pricey, and this limits the number who can afford to join in on the fun.

I am quite certain that if someone were to build a power cord, or power conditioner for tens of dollars and not tens of thousands of dollars that really worked well, most wall pluggers would become non wall pluggers and opt for the gains in sonics.

But it doesn't make sense to use a $4000.00 power cord on a
$1000.00 integrated.
It might make a sonic improvement that is noticeable or it may not.
The point is no one who has a $1000.00 integrated will buy that cord.
But if they at least try one, they may just have an ear opening experience.
Like the fellow who found that upgrading the receptacles on his power cords made an improvement.
He could have just stuck with the plastic molded ends and wall plugged it that way.
But he did notice a difference that he felt was better than stock and was willing to pay the cost of admission.

Much the same as most of the non-wall pluggers I have known.
We try, and don't buy if it doesn't improve the sound or if it is too expensive.
I would really like to audtion some of the exotic stuff eventhough I can't afford it now.
Just to give my ears a reference in case someone offering a cable for $40.00 sounds the same.

Lacee,

OK - that is helpful. I get what you are trying to say, but still think the "Wall Plugger" concept as you articulate it doesn't exactly fit to world of audiophile AC management.

1. Direct "wall plugging" is not necessarily a low tech or "anti-audiophile" approach if your electricity is fairly clean at the outlet. Many HiFi enthusiasts purposely bypass very expensive conditioners for some or all of their gear because they think it sounds more "alive" and "detailed" at the possible expense of some smoothness and slightly "noiser" signal. In the extreme this may mean drawing juice through high end circuit breakers, cryo-treated 10 gauge Teflon coated Romex wire in the wall to cryo-treated Rhodium outlets... but "wall plugging" never-the-less.

2. In addition to cleaning up unacceptably noisy AC, a GOOD power conditioner's best purpose may be to protect your other gear from polluted AC coming from your digital sources instead of from the wall or the room. Cheap "power conditioners" typically add or subtract more than they should by clipping transient peaks and limiting musical dynamics.

3. Better power cords may act as "filters" to some small degree, altering or organizing current as it passes from the wall or conditioner to your gear. But their main purposes are to both reject EMF/RFI from the room and your gear from affecting the AC traveling in your power cord, and (most importantly) contain EMF/RFI around your high current AC cables from affecting low current signals coursing through the circuits in your electronics and interconnects. Whether plugged into the wall or your power conditioner, the major benefits to system sound resulting from better designed power cords would be the same.

So there are several kinds of "Wall Pluggers" - "audio-neo-phile-ytes", who don't think about AC until they blow a fuse, audiophiles who know about and actively reject all forms of AC management as so much fairy dust, and audiophiles who heavily manage AC but reject power conditioners for some or any applications.

There are at least two kinds of "Non-Wall Pluggers" - "audio-neo-phile-ytes", who believe power management is achieved by using power conditioners they bought from a rack at Best Buy, and Audiophiles who have thousands invested in AC management, including complex and expensive power conditioners.

So I think the real difference you are trying to identify is between the "AC Tweakers" and the "Stock Corders", not "Wall Pluggers" and "Non-Wall Pluggers".