Do powercords make a difference in sound?

09-07-11: Tbg
Paperw8, why do you care? It is not your money nor your listening. It sounds like you are offended for others, why would that be?

i engage in these discussions for the following reasons:

1)intellectual interest: i sometimes learn stuff from debating others' points of view (that hasn't been the case so much in this discussion, but i do pick up information);

2)personal interest: i actually do want to see better, more reliable, information on audio equipment choices. i actually have gripes about the quality of information in general, not just about cable matters. but my thinking is that by challenging the information out there that it will hopefully result in better information;

3)general consumer interest: there is a lot of bs out there about audio products that is being passed off as information. as i mentioned, audio equipment is often sold by people who know a lot about electronics to people who know little about electronics. that's fertile ground for being taken advantage of. i really think that people are getting snookered out of a lot of money on the basis of questionable claims, and i feel that someone should challenge the bs.

Paperw8, I appreciate the civility of your post. These are my responses to each:

1) intellectual interest: I guess this debate has been going on for years and has no resolution. Listen or accept EE laws which suggest little difference.

2) personal interest: this is related to the above. Apparently you want measures such as resistance, THD, efficiency, wattage, etc. I would say that is fine, but personally I think our measures leave much to be desired as they fail to assess what matters.

3)general consumer interest: yes, capitalism and advertising does result in every effort being made to sell product. Hype sells! Unless you want to do away with private enterprise, it will always be there. I am sure many would question why you volunteer to save them from advertising or buying what they want. I suppose one could demand double blind tests for everything, but I doubt if there would be much interest and how would you do that for cars, etc.

Frankly, I think you guys are tilting at windmills.

>>09-08-11: Paperw8
1)intellectual interest:<<

Well you can skip tbg's contributions if that's the case.

in the world of audio nothing is undeniable.

claims about differences cannot be definitively substantiated without a mathematical proof as knowledge can not come from sensation. the latter is unreliable.

most of the comments so far, are nothing more than bs.

Paperw8: As you apparently insist on missing my point I suppose there's not much I can do about it, but my original hypothetical to you wasn't about my opinions or perceptions, or even about me in particular. Go back and reread it: I asked how, in your psychological paradigm, you can account for the fact that audiophile behavior doesn't always, or even very often in my experience, conform to your purported stereotype (of being inextricably swayed by factors other than subjective sonic performance).

I'm left to pose the same Socratism that I did earlier in the thread: Namely, which approach -- yours (power cords can't 'work' for a [selective] variety of reasons *other* than actually auditioning some in revealing systems and coming up empty, therefore one can disregard that imperative), or mine (essentially the opposite, i.e., since I can reliably hear them 'work', then a totally explicated formulation for *precisely* why and how they work is distinctly secondary) -- is the more predetermined and possibly prejudicial?

I don't quibble with your subjugate points about value-for-money or questionable advertising practices. (I do however find unconvincing your critique regarding the hypothetical of high-end amplifier manufacturers and power cords.) And I can't even say that I don't sympathize with your position to some degree, since I myself likewise decline to audition the sorts of tweaks that strike *me* as being unrealistically 'magical' or baseless. There's only so much time and resources in life, and each of us has to choose for ourselves what to pursue and what not to.

What I must wonder is, how you would explain it if you came to my house, listened to my system with different power cord substitutions, and heard the correlated sonic effects that I hear? Because I don't see how you could fail to if you have ears on your head. But the happy user of some 'black box' tweak would say the same thing to me, so absent actually doing this test, on (and on!) we go...