Hi Al, thank you for your thoughtful response. It does seem to answer my question about whether your position that power cords can't have an intrinsic 'sound' is taken primarily from theory or listening.
I am not qualified to submit to you the existence of other possible technical factors beyond the ones you listed, and indeed there may be none (though I did wonder why you omitted capacitance -- I'm sure you have a reason and will explain it). But I tend to be skeptical about any assertion that the things we know to measure for are necessarily the only qualities we would ever want or need to measure, relevent to correlating with subjective sonic impressions, if only we knew what and how. (Not that you have specifically asserted such.)
I would however venture to guess that questions of what I will loosely lump under the umbrella term of resonance, not only of the mechanical kind, may play a part. And I do believe that, despite the sorts of well-recognized factors you describe and nobody would dispute, it's highly likely that no one actually possesses the knowledge or wherewithal to sit down with a blank sheet of paper to design a power cord and know in advance just what it will sound like. (I think there's a bit of a crapshoot-factor here -- some call it 'black art' -- that demands reiterative, trial-and-error experience involving subjective listening in the design process in order to accumulate a useful knowledge base -- at least for honest designers who aren't just 'badge engineering' their products and slapping a fancy jacket on them to go along with the high price tag). But of course for those who share your take that power cords can't 'have sounds' in the first place, that assumption, even if true, would not present a conceptual hurdle.
There's nothing particularly difficult, from the standpoint of either practicality or the ability to draw valid conclusions, about an audiophile getting his or her hands on a few different power cords, trying them on various components, and seeing whether or not any consistencies in sonic signature tend to migrate with the cords to a perceptible degree. You could do it as easily as I. If you did, I'd wager that you just might reconsider whether you've satisfactorily explained everything there may be to think about from the theoretical perspective.
Fortunately however, the whole question is largely trivial and moot in my view. Whether or not power cords, or any cables for that matter, possess their own intrinsic 'sounds', or whether such qualities, to the extend we believe and can observe that they exist at all, are purely extrinsic in nature, at the end of the day we all still need some kind of wires to hook up and plug in our gear with. And unless you're going to design and make your own, or are hell-bent on just going to Home Despot and buying off the reel without subjectively evaluating anything else, so as to conform with preexisting beliefs (however apparently logical) -- or maybe just in order to save money (quite logical if someone has never heard a difference) -- then there's really nothing else to do but identify a few likely candidates, quite probably based on theoretical considerations among others, and then listen to music through them. Except of course if debating about it online is the higher priority... ;^)
Cheers, that's all I got, I'm out!
I am not qualified to submit to you the existence of other possible technical factors beyond the ones you listed, and indeed there may be none (though I did wonder why you omitted capacitance -- I'm sure you have a reason and will explain it). But I tend to be skeptical about any assertion that the things we know to measure for are necessarily the only qualities we would ever want or need to measure, relevent to correlating with subjective sonic impressions, if only we knew what and how. (Not that you have specifically asserted such.)
I would however venture to guess that questions of what I will loosely lump under the umbrella term of resonance, not only of the mechanical kind, may play a part. And I do believe that, despite the sorts of well-recognized factors you describe and nobody would dispute, it's highly likely that no one actually possesses the knowledge or wherewithal to sit down with a blank sheet of paper to design a power cord and know in advance just what it will sound like. (I think there's a bit of a crapshoot-factor here -- some call it 'black art' -- that demands reiterative, trial-and-error experience involving subjective listening in the design process in order to accumulate a useful knowledge base -- at least for honest designers who aren't just 'badge engineering' their products and slapping a fancy jacket on them to go along with the high price tag). But of course for those who share your take that power cords can't 'have sounds' in the first place, that assumption, even if true, would not present a conceptual hurdle.
There's nothing particularly difficult, from the standpoint of either practicality or the ability to draw valid conclusions, about an audiophile getting his or her hands on a few different power cords, trying them on various components, and seeing whether or not any consistencies in sonic signature tend to migrate with the cords to a perceptible degree. You could do it as easily as I. If you did, I'd wager that you just might reconsider whether you've satisfactorily explained everything there may be to think about from the theoretical perspective.
Fortunately however, the whole question is largely trivial and moot in my view. Whether or not power cords, or any cables for that matter, possess their own intrinsic 'sounds', or whether such qualities, to the extend we believe and can observe that they exist at all, are purely extrinsic in nature, at the end of the day we all still need some kind of wires to hook up and plug in our gear with. And unless you're going to design and make your own, or are hell-bent on just going to Home Despot and buying off the reel without subjectively evaluating anything else, so as to conform with preexisting beliefs (however apparently logical) -- or maybe just in order to save money (quite logical if someone has never heard a difference) -- then there's really nothing else to do but identify a few likely candidates, quite probably based on theoretical considerations among others, and then listen to music through them. Except of course if debating about it online is the higher priority... ;^)
Cheers, that's all I got, I'm out!