hospital grade or commercial grade receptacles ?

What was this thread about? Oh yes, receptacles.

My closed mind did not prevent me from making a careful comparison of cryo'd vs uncryo'd outlets. I neither heard not measured any difference. Too bad, because, as some have mentioned, the cost is relatively small.

Don't deny that you are rich! If you weren't the cost of your system would be enough evidence to have you committed.

Eldartford., I wish it were so. My system is the culmination of years of investing, selling and trading. Much of what I have would not be possible had I not done photography for many of the high end audio manufacturers.

As for outlets, I have avoided comments on that topic and you know why. Lets just say that each must make up their own mind on that subject.

Tobias, I love Montreal, and I wish I got there more often. The closest I usually get is Toronto (yet another awesome Canadian city - but Montreal is more fun IMO), otherwise I would enjoy taking you up on your offer. Hearing other peoples' systems is always interesting, but hearing other peoples' MUSIC is fascinating. I've developed so many new interests by listening with others. Especially since I have a tendency to spend too much time with Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert, left to my own devices.

I agree with you on higher contact pressure being better, and I think I mentioned that once. Good signal transfer is always good, though I've never been able to measure an insertion loss for power cords approaching a tenth of a volt, even on conventional stock outlets. Of course, my homes have always been of rather recent construction.

I think I also mentioned I'm not a fan of participating in double-blind tests. Frankly, I find them tedious, and I'm of the opinion that the annoyance of a DBT tends to mask differences, but that's only an opinion. I like to listen, but if I hear differences that correspond with measurements I'm more inclined to make purchase decisions based on my perceived differences.

I think I'll be able to hang on to my "collective hallucination" notion easily, because I'm convinced I'm a victim myself sometimes. Once I performed a comparative cable test, between 18ga speaker cables and 10ga cables, and I was convinced I heard an improvement from the 10ga cables. Then I got up and found I had switched the cables improperly (I was distracted by a friend) and I was listening to the 18ga cables all along. That incident, along with others, taught me a lot about wanting to find a difference. Another reason I can hang on is that I'm having fun. I'm not taking the insults seriously.

Eldartford, I hope you do not think it is me saying that you can't make sense if you don't have scientific training. My message is that if you think you are observing phenomena that run counter to well-proven knowledge and understanding you should check your premises. In this case, people are claiming to hear differences between power cords and outlets, when they measure identically with proven parameters (I emphasize the proven part), are not in the audio signal path, and there's no known way they can affect the audio signal in anything except a very indirect manner. And then they assume that because they think they hear a difference, that somehow that proves that humanity's understanding of how electrical circuits work is incomplete. I have a problem with that. I don't think scientific training is an issue, I just think that if you can't understand how some technical knowledge applies formal training can't hurt.

Irv, let me ask you this, does our knowledge of how electrical circuits work define how music sounds in a given system? Are you absolutely positively certain that our current knowledge of electricity would preclude any possibility that what some of us hear is little more that plecebo with reference to outlets and powercords, would filters or any type of wiring configuration in power cords make a difference, or is this just plain impossible?

I have overall enjoyed your responses but in no way can agree with your conclusions that there is no possibility that what some of us are hearing is nothing more than self-induced, my personal experiences are emphatically sure of this, as sure as you are but for very different reasons. Is this a religious argument, believers vs non based on current evidence (science) or "faith through truth in what I hear". Are you that damn certain that you're right?