John Dunlavy On "Cable Nonsense"

"Anyway, ABE (cont'd): I am dying to know what power cord you regard as an essential upgrade from the stock power cord, but only costs $50."

J_thunders, no where in my previous posts did I say anything about essential upgrades from stock power cords so please do not misquote me. In most cases I do not believe that it is "essential" to replace the stock power cord at all.

If you must know what power cords I have used, I use mostly the stock cord. But I have built my own using relatively inexpensive parts and cable commonly available from most hardware stores or electrical supply warehouses.

It doesn't surprise me that there are so many outfits that make mega-buck magical high-end power cords. It takes very little (or ZERO) R&D investment, just pretty wires with big gold connectors, some advertising budget, and an audience willing to believe in the magic.

If I buy a fat garden hose of a certain color at 100 times the price of a standard garden hose, will the water coming from the hose magically make my lawn more green? Or will I need a gold plated nozzle to really notice the improvement?

Abe, what a great idea. If I thought audiophiles had any money left over for lawn care, I'd go into the $5,000 garden hose business. An easy sell.

Plasmatronic, so you're the guy who started this intense debate! I wonder how many people here sell cable goods? Someone complained that this thread is hurting cable sales on Audiogon.

I'll have to agree that some high-end systems are deserving of a high-end power cord but mostly for the eye candy effect. At some point, the entire audio system becomes more than just a means of producing fine sound. It should look nice. Personally, I don't like brown zip cord. I prefer a slightly fatter black zip cord. And you?

That someone was me, and it was a joke. Your reply accusing me of misquoting you is mighty convenient, don't you think. At first you say "I agree that a good power cord is essential..." Does this not lead the average reader of your post to believe you are talking about something other than a stock power cord? Otherwise, you might have well said: "I believe a power cord is essential"--which of course makes about as much sense as, well, no sense at all.

Or, did you truly mean to try and suggest at the outset that the stock power cord is what you were talking about? If so, why didn't you just say that in the first place? Something like "I believe the stock cord is good enough, and it is essential." Or maybe, "stock cords are essential, but they are also good too." Or how about, "I believe a good stock cord is essential."

If you truly meant to say what you suggest, then please excuse me, I do not ever like to be accused of misquoting anybody and I offer my deepest apologies.

This is kind of like the debate that some reviewers had with EE's when digital first came out. The reviewers claimed that there were very audible differences between digital signals. Of course, the EE's stated "digital is digital", etc... because it all basically measured the same. Or so they thought.

Of course, J. Peter Moncrieff was one of the "golden ears" that said that he could hear "darker background, greater dynamic range, sharper detail, etc".... when comparing one CD player to another. Even though the frequency response was linear and every form of distortion was low, there were OBVIOUS differences in how they sounded. The funny thing is that he went on to document via electrical measurements that what he was saying and hearing WAS true. While one player had deeper nulls and higher peaks, faster rise and fall times, sharper images with less distortion, etc... the other was clearly not as fast or clean. Moncrieff even went so far as to publish photographs of waveforms taken via his o'scope for direct comparison to demonstrate that "not so subtle" and "audible differences" DID exist and ARE verifiable. That is, IF you knew how to do the proper tests AND interpret the data that you collected.

There is an analogy that i use on a daily basis that seems to fit here: Just because you have a hammer and a saw, that doesn't make you a carpenter. The same can be said for EE's, ME's, technicians, etc... Just because you have a piece of paper called a degree or a license, years of experience, etc... does NOT mean that you know or have seen it all. As such, the best people in ANY field are the ones that think they know very little and are always looking for explanations of how & why. NOT the people that say "that's impossible".

Like i said before, just because we can't "measure it" today doesn't mean that the differences didn't exist yesterday. I can think what i want, but that doesn't make it "fact" or mean that others are wrong for not agreeing with me. It just means that it is my opinion and only worth the value of what others put in it. As such, neither Abe nor John Dunlavy nor i are "right". We simply have our opinions. Put your faith in what your ears, eyes and heart tell you. God didn't give us all of these senses and the amount of intelligence that he did for us to throw it away because we don't know exactly how something works. Sean
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