Do powercords make a difference in sound?

Chad329,

I think you have the right perspective.

Good luck!

Chad, you do have the right perspective; give it a shot to see if it's meritorious. Unlike some extreme sports there's very little permanent scarring. ;)

But I would urge you to work with at least 2 or three cables of one manufacturer (i.e. 2 or 3 power cords, or 2 sets of interconnects, etc). Trying one cord at a time is less evidential; like working with a canal system and only altering 1/5 of it. Some people have tried one cord and not heard much difference, then wrongly concluded that "cables don't matter". If you take a minimalist approach to it you shouldn't expect maximum results. A network of cables is influenced proportionately to how much you change the network, and similarly its influence upon the system.

Liguy from this discussion is reconsidering power cables since it appears he tried extremely similar cords. I admire his openness to take another look/test.

It will be enjoyable to read about your experience.

Chad, it was inevitable that you make this decision. Now you face the nearly countless alternatives. Few of us have heard more than a handful of what is available. Friends with good ears are your best recourse. Or if you have a true audiophile dealer nearby give what he sells a listen. View it as a quest not as a task.

09-06-11: Douglas_schroeder
(poking my nose back in for a moment...)
Paperw8, you do harm to your argument with such illustrations that stretch credibility. I sense you are quite passionate about your position, but you hurt yourself when you suggest...

-That a person be wary of an individual who describes a phenomenon but can't explain it. Doesn't all observation lead to exploration, discovery? Shall we be suspect of all who hear a phenomenon regularly? Perhaps we should be suspect of those who don't?

-Re: Personal Biases - The existence of bias is not a reason for dismissal of a phenomenon. It may influence one's perception, but certainly is not definitive proof against it.

i write as a person who really wishes that there were better, more credible, information available about audio equipment. but the amount of bs that is so frequently proliferated about in the public, hurts the credibility of the industry in general.

i appreciate the existence of scientific methods of empirical observation. but that's not what is going on here. here, the problems are that you often have suggestion and anticipation *before* observation. that kind of stuff can color your observations. that doesn't "prove" that the obsrevations are incorrect; but it does make them highly suspect.

if you read my comments more closely, you will note that i stated that AT MINIMUM, such "evaluations" need to be done in blind testing, where the listener does not know which components are being used, or even whether components have been changed at all from one test to the next. i guarantee you that you would be a lot less sure about the purported "sonic improvements" that you claim to hear if you didn't know what you were listening to from one test to the next.

09-06-11: Douglas_schroeder
I have had the pleasure of having several audiophiles, some industry professionals, in my room who started with a negative bias against cables, especially power cables. It has been pure joy to demonstrate simply the efficacy of switching power cords. To a man (and one man's wife as well!) they have been impressed, i.e. they have heard the difference - and heard it immediately. You assume a positive bias, but simple comparisons in a good audio system has been able to overcome negative bias in people.
I enjoy their shocked expressions and struggle to find explanations. :)

i don't know what your test methods were, but if you went into it with the intention of "proving" that power cables did make a difference, i suspect that you tended to set up the test to bias toward the result that you were seeking to get.

in general, this kind of testing is highly unreliable: i'll listen to one component, and then while repeating the test, and even when playing the same piece of music, i have to try to remember exactly how it sounded a few minutes earlier. it is an, at best, unreliable means of testing, and one in which the bias is to think that the most recent hearing is the best one. so if, in your testing, you used the "upgraded" power cord last, then i would suspect that you biased the results. that is why you have to do repeated blind testing in random sequence (including tests where you don't make any changes).

09-06-11: Douglas_schroeder
-You mention Pseudo-science and "...stuff which seems to operate by magic." Surely you are aware of the many persons in the cable industry who have engineering/electronics education? Surely you know about research white papers, discussions on websites of work with dielectric, conductor size/geometry and gauge? I'm not speaking of networked cables here as they are a special case, but of straight wire cable manufacturers. It is misinformed of you to state that there is no attempt at science/research behind cable manufacturing. Now, you may wish to disdain it, that's your choice. But to pretend it doesn't exist is inaccurate. If you wish to read some reviews with an eye toward the design element of cables I suggest you find my cable reviews on Dagogo.com.

i don't doubt that the makers of audio gear are knowledgeable about electronics. but i also know that these are people who are out to make a buck by selling their wares to people who largely *don't* know a lot about electronics. let me give you an example - siltech makes high end cables, i mean, these guys make speaker cables that cost over $30,000. when i read what they had to say about their products, there were comments about how they designed their cables to over come the effects of signal distortion that can occur as a signal travels through cable. what the guy was invoking was a transmission line model of a cable. technically, that is correct, a cable can indeed be modelled as equivalent to a series of capacitors and inductors in a transmission line model. the problem is that the transmission line model is typically only relevant at microwave frequencies; to invoke such a model for signals in the range of audio frequencies is ridiculous.

so basically, these guys are trying to convince you to spend thousands of dollars on cable that you can get at radio shack for $0.40/foot. that said, the siltech cables (connectors, sheaths and all) look a lot more impressive than the stuff at radio shack.

I think anyone interested should read this:
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm#house