hospital grade or commercial grade receptacles ?

Irv, EVERY change in equipment creates a change in the resulting sound, whether YOU can hear it. For instance, decades ago I laughed when my 'golden-eared' buddy talked about elevating speakercables from the carpet. Later in a single-blind test, my jaw dropped when I opened my eyes to see him holding the 2 cables off the ground after I had heard a substantial improvement in the sound...and I'M NOT the G-E audiophile, I'm the generally-tinned-eared audiofool (and I imagine you'd agree with at least the last part. :-) ).

EVERY change makes a difference. Most of them, most of us can't hear. But that doesn't mean there's no difference and that doesn't mean SOMEONE isn't hearing it.

But of course all of this doesn't mean that some of us at some time aren't deluding ourselves into hearing a change that doesn't really exist. That's why each of us has to be careful and methodical about these kinds of changes.
.

Feel free to choose your own line of reasoning, but the only truth I answer to in audio is the one informed by my own two ears.

And that is my final answer, Regis.

Irv, at the risk of boring you senile, I will relate my own expereince. I stopped reading Stereophile, and more or less dropped off the Audiophile wagon when they started talking about Powercords improving the sound of a system. I bought into the whole speaker wire and interconnect making a difference, but now they had crossed the line between reason and nonsense!

Many years later I received an offer to subscribe to Stereophile again for about $12. I thought, at that price even if they were still crazy, I could justify the expense by finding one or two good articles over the course of the year.

I was surprised to hear that years later they were still going on about PCs. I was still skeptical, but I marched down to my local HiFi supplier and bought a cheap Transparent Audio PC. It was $100 which at the time was a fair precentage of my entire Stereo investment. I placed the cord on my pre-amp and fired everything up.

I was fully prepared to yell "Ha, I told you lying idiots that this was all foolishness and you are stupid if you think anyone in their right mind will fall for this!" loud enough that the guys at Stereophile would hear me all the way from Wisconsin.

That was not to be my expereince. The cord made the pre-amp, and dare I say it, the whole system sound better. I have since replaced all my PCs with a DIY recipe, but along the way I bought a couple of PS Audio (if I were in the market again I would get Porter Ports) outlets. I was again skeptical, but the difference was audible.

If there anyone who should not have heard a difference it would be the adject skeptic. How do you explain my expereince?

Ivr writes:

Now look, frankly I wouldn't have wasted my time with this discussion, but telling someone that electrical outlets affect the "sonic signature" of a stereo system is just so much nonsense I couldn't stand it. There is no need to measure the effect of outlets on sound because they can't have the effects being described here.

If that is one's experience, then it's not nonsense. I changed outlets three times and could hear the difference each time. I could also hear changes as these receptacles broke in a bit - and sometimes they took a while.

You are predisposed into thinking that outlets can't make a difference. I can understand that, as I found it hard to believe myself. But, gee, it's simple and cheap to try with something like a Pass and Seymour 5242.

Even if there were no sonic benefit from one outlet over another, the act of cutting off the existing Romex, stripping it to expose fresh copper, having new contacts that press tighter on the blades of the power cord plug and so on is all good stuff, and could be expected to have an effect.

Regards,

Nrchy, I can't explain it other than you wanted to hear a difference. Aftermarket power cords, cables, outlets, and other stuff, does look and feel good. Look at Audioquest cables. Perhaps the greatest snake-oil per dollar of any high-end product, yet they are physically very, very nice stuff. Electrically, total BS. But I can see where someone could allow themselves to think they made a difference just because they are so cool looking.

My point is only that power-related stuff is outside of the signal path. It can't make the differences some people think they do, as compared to properly functioning alternatives. There's no more voltage going down the wire, noise isolation makes no difference, and the contact resistance is no lower than what they sell at Home Depot. They can't make more power or cleaner power. If you want that there's AC regeneration (like in some Levinson amps) or Varacs and other power line filtering / voltage leveling components. But even those only keep the power clean and steady, they aren't in the signal path.

Fighting one's own false perceptions is sometimes the toughest battle.