$8,400 Power Cord, $8,995 Power Distributor, I'm a flat earther with this stuff, BUT

[MylesBAstor]

Do we realize that endeavors much more precise than high end audio do not use any those ultra expensive cords...
.

And just as many leading people, like Bob Ludwig, Bernie Grundman, Paul Stubblebine, Reference Recordings (that you hold in high esteem), Puget Sound Recordings, Snow Ghost and many others, do. And you know they are ultra-critical and listen to everything that goes into their studio. Do you think it's any mystery as to why these places continue produce product of a very consistent and high quality?

You could also say the same thing about studios and speakers. But that doesn't seem to concern people as much as a piece of wire.

 

[microstrip]

So now expressing doubts about a product is an injure to their manufacturers or designers? No criticism allowed.

Do we realize that endeavors much more precise than high end audio do not use any those ultra expensive cords...

Now something that should carry a lowly 60 Hz needs to have "high bandwidth" and that, said with all the air of a fact... Man! The thing we see in high end audio...

Frank,

IMHO doubts and skeptics are always welcome in WBF. However when they take the shape of personal insults, vulgar analogies and show an absolute lack of knowledge of the subject I do not see any think positive in those posts. YMMV. BTW, did you read the whole thread before posting?

BTW, you are a supporter of power conditioning - and you appreciated having lots of "good" electrical power at 60Hz, if I remember well. Do you realize that any one who knows what means PSRR and know what dB really means will prove you scientifically you that it is an useless think in less than five minutes?

 

[FrantzM]

Myles

Classic appeal to authority argumentation. That these people use those cables prove nothing.

The price is simply ludicrous for a simple piece of wire whose purpose is to transport on a short distance a few watts at a fixed frequency...
Now if you believe it makes your system great and the ever increasing soundstage ever wider and deeper, more enjoyment to you but please don't tell me I can't criticize or express my profound skepticism toward this product. Especially when no one can tell me what it does to clean up nasties on the power line. My opinions on no the subject of power quality are, I hope well known .

 

[FrantzM]

Micro

No I didn't realize that one can prove to me in five mins that power quality doesn't matter ... Since you know your way around dB and other notion would you be able to prove that. For the record there is a large body of work on the subject of power quality and it's effects on electronics.
Also do I need to read the whole thread to post? We're making up rules as we go along ?

 

[MylesBAstor]

Myles

Classic appeal to authority argumentation. That these people use those cables prove nothing.

The price is simply ludicrous for a simple piece of wire whose purpose is to transport on a short distance a few watts at a fixed frequency...
Now if you believe it makes your system great and the ever increasing soundstage ever wider and deeper, more enjoyment to you but please don't tell me I can't criticize or express my profound skepticism toward this product. Especially when no one can tell me what it does to clean up nasties on the power line. My opinions on no the subject of power quality are, I hope well known .

Excuse me Frantz but I didn't criticize you but merely pointed out the other side of your argument. Otherwise we're being parochial. I also think these individuals body of work speaks for itself.

But it sure sounds like price of the cables should be separated from whether cable quality is important.

 

[Atmasphere]

And exactly how limited is bandwidth of your basic 3 pin power cord?

http://www2.ing.unipi.it/~a008328/documenti/powerlines/PowerLineCom/Bibliografia/Rif36.pdf

Page two lists the basic electrical parameters of Romex, and a couple 18 gauge power cords. Sure looks like plenty of bandwidth either way.

I realize you are just trying to troll me but- Yes it does. But that of course is not the whole story. Did you see the part in my post where I measured voltage drops across the cord, which corresponded to a loss of power in the amp? Some power cords are not very good, in particular 18 gauge (!) ones, which will heat up if used with the wrong power amp.

I was a skeptic of the explanations of why power cords worked as described by the sellers of those cords. It irritated me that I could hear that the cords made a difference, but that the explanations for why this was so made no sense. As an EE, I like to have good concrete proofs. When I found that a mere 2 volt drop (as measured by my 3 1/2 digit DVM, if I had another digit I probably would have seen that the voltage drop was a little higher) could rob the amp I was testing of 40 watts, it got my attention. Best I can make out, the difference between the best and worst of "commercial" power cords is about 6% as far as bandwidth goes. That's not a lot, but that is the sort of margins that audiophiles work with on a routine basis. One test I have not done is to try to measure the effects of current draw on bandwidth, IOW test to see if bandwidth remains the same when a power cord is carrying a heavier load as opposed to a light one.

I also suspect that power cords affect tube amplifiers more than transistor amps, due to the filament supply in the amplifier, which can draw current all the time as opposed to just on peaks.

Now with regards to the paper, the bandwidths described are insufficient to have much meaning. If you are dealing with a swept resonance (which is common in a lot of transformer-diode arrangements) we are talking about energy that occurs at several MHz, not just 100-200KHz. When I view diode commutation on the oscilloscope, I see frequencies much higher than a mere 200KHz.

 

[BobM]

I am currently doing some beta testing and assessment for a power cord manufacturer. What is astonishing is that we are evaluating IEC's and male AC plugs using the exact same cable and configuration. Just changing out connectors makes a world of difference.

No, not just perceived depth of bass, but in the overall presentation and balance of the music, including soundstaging and texture. There is certainly a whole lot of "art" (e.g. trial and error) to building a cable than any typical scientific measurement method would suggest.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Frank,

IMHO doubts and skeptics are always welcome in WBF. However when they take the shape of personal insults, vulgar analogies and show an absolute lack of knowledge of the subject I do not see any think positive in those posts. YMMV. BTW, did you read the whole thread before posting?

BTW, you are a supporter of power conditioning - and you appreciated having lots of "good" electrical power at 60Hz, if I remember well. Do you realize that any one who knows what means PSRR and know what dB really means will prove you scientifically you that it is an useless think in less than five minutes?

Still watching, and my analogy was not vulgar and I was careful not to make anything personal. I think your post here may be the first personal insult.

 

[BlueFox]

I was skimming again. Did I miss anything important? If I did, as my penance, I offer my free marketing advice to Shunyata -- fire your agency. Their copywriter has buried your paradigm-shifting breakthrough beneath two or three clicks of bovine excrement.

Tim

Still watching, and my analogy was not vulgar and I was careful not to make anything personal. I think your post here may be the first personal insult.

True. Instead of a personal insult you insulted a company, the founder, the employees, and all their customers.

 

[Empirical]

Steve when you state about 20 times , just what is tha avg inductance of 20 feet of romex ?
Al

Al - this data used to be on my website when I sold cables. It's not 20X. The 6 foot cable measures the same as 20 feet of ROMEX.

I have the data, but its not easy to get to now....

Steve N.

 

[Empirical]

What filters are in those power cords? How do they eliminate noise? I think it's a pretty simple answer, if we're talking about cable and plugs; they don't. A well-sheilded cable may prevent the introduction of noise, but it has no capacity to reduce it. And I don't have to hear this any more than I have to get on the space shuttle to know the earth isn't flat. Born a few years later, PT Barnum would have been a high-end tweak manufacturer.

Tim

Filters on the current-carrying conductors are a bad idea IMO. These limit di/dt. On the other hand, filters on the earth ground wire are very useful. They can limit ground currents caused by ground-loops.

Steve N.

 

[Empirical]

I rarely open cable threads. I should have stuck with that. You tell me...



That's the entire copy support on their website for their TOTL cable. At least they didn't make any specific performance claims. Instead, they said almost nothing. To be fair, we probably ought to look at this research in the Technical section...

...impressive. They are measuring power cables with a device of their own invention and reporting results not correlated to audio performance (other than in the very non-specific bit of chest-beating above in bold). So, according to their own proprietary measurements, their cable moves current better than the ROMEX in the wall. They have given us no reason to believe that will have any impact on component performance, and no metrics to compare their proprietary measurements to, but we believe...

I was skimming again. Did I miss anything important? If I did, as my penance, I offer my free marketing advice to Shunyata -- fire your agency. Their copywriter has buried your paradigm-shifting breakthrough beneath two or three clicks of bovine excrement.

Tim

I've built cables using ROMEX. They are okay for the home theater but not 2-channel. More technology is needed for these.

Steve N.

 

[Atmasphere]

Now something that should carry a lowly 60 Hz needs to have "high bandwidth" and that, said with all the air of a fact... Man! The thing we see in high end audio...

Apparently a horse can be brought to water but can't be induced to drink. Go back and reread my post and you will see why bandwidth is required.

Especially when no one can tell me what it does to clean up nasties on the power line. My opinions on no the subject of power quality are, I hope well known .

Classic use of a Red Herring; the power cord does not clean up nasties on the line and we all know that.

If you like I can direct you to a paper published by Fluke Instruments regarding harmonics on power lines, how to measure them, how they occur; and how electronics and electrical devices react to them. The article was published about 20 years ago. The fact that AC power has to be clean for certain electronics to perform their best is no secret in the commercial/industrial electronics industry; companies like Elgar would not be in business today if otherwise. BTW, so far Elgar has made the best power conditioners available at any price; most 'high end' audio products are so much junk by comparison.

Still watching, and my analogy was not vulgar and I was careful not to make anything personal. I think your post here may be the first personal insult.

Funny, Tim, have you noticed that you and I have agreed a lot more on this thread than we have disagreed?

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Apparently a horse can be brought to water but can't be induced to drink. Go back and reread my post and you will see why bandwidth is required.



Classic use of a Red Herring; the power cord does not clean up nasties on the line and we all know that.

If you like I can direct you to a paper published by Fluke Instruments regarding harmonics on power lines, how to measure them, how they occur; and how electronics and electrical devices react to them. The article was published about 20 years ago. The fact that AC power has to be clean for certain electronics to perform their best is no secret in the commercial/industrial electronics industry; companies like Elgar would not be in business today if otherwise. BTW, so far Elgar has made the best power conditioners available at any price; most 'high end' audio products are so much junk by comparison.



Funny, Tim, have you noticed that you and I have agreed a lot more on this thread than we have disagreed?

Yes. I think we fundamentally agree on this issue. And if we fundamentally agree on this issue, I suspect there are more...

Tim

 

[microstrip]

Micro

No I didn't realize that one can prove to me in five mins that power quality doesn't matter ... Since you know your way around dB and other notion would you be able to prove that. For the record there is a large body of work on the subject of power quality and it's effects on electronics.
Also do I need to read the whole thread to post? We're making up rules as we go along ?

Frantz,

Exactly - but all this large body of work on power quality and it's effect proves that thanks to power supply regulators and the intrinsic noise rejection of modern electronic topologies you do not need the power conditioners or regenerators you love, particularly at the frequency of 60 Hz you are referring. For example a good regulator has around 70 dB PSSR and an amplifier has 60 dB PSSR - this means that any fluctuation in the mains voltage will be rejected by 130 dB. The electronic experts will ask why do we need more? Surely an audiophile will answer because he wants a more black background, and the engineer will have no answer.

The Keithley electrometers (the most sensitive direct measuring instruments I have used) from the 70's had to run on batteries to avoid supply noise, but models we bought at the 90's run on any dirty mains without problems - and have better performance!

OK, I conclude that you comment on posts just according to the direction of the wind - even without knowing what is being debated. Great!

 

[Don Hills]

Wait a minute... that article shows a cheap chinese wall-wart whose Synergistic sticker fell off, exposing the real origin. Is this downright "fraud"? ...

I don't see any specific claims made for the audio quality of the wall-warts. They apparently charge $125 per wart, though. Assuming that the buy-in price of the wart is a few dollars in bulk, the rest is obviously handling, warehousing, administrivia etc, and the cost of the custom sticker. Kind of like the markup on car parts...


Personally, I'm not in the target market. I have enough IEC power cables to last the rest of my life. (Not that long to wait...) 16 ga conductors, braid and foil shielded. Built back in the early 80s and shipped with IBM PCs and other IT equipment. Individually tagged with part number, modification version, batch number and manufacture plant and date. No-one liked them because they were so stiff and heavy. Wonder if I could get a good price for them on eBay...

 

[es347]

Snake oil galore ...Kraken ... my dogs of war ! View attachment 14083

...the veritable den of vipers :b

 

[es347]

You're right. I haven't heard it. I wouldn't cross the street to hear an $8400 power cord. I wouldn't lend it that much credibility. How can I say that? Because it is a power cord. If it has no filters built into it, it cannot remove noise. If it has no active components in it, it cannot increase the current or change the bandwidth. It can, if it is a perfect power cord, deliver to the component exactly what it receives from the outlet. And of course it's not perfect, so it's only effect can be negative.

If I told you that I could run hot air through the entire ductwork system of your house, from the furnace to the room furthest away and by encasing the last 2 feet of ductwork in marble and plating the inside of the duct in platinum, it would raise the temperature of the air -- no heating elements, no active elements at all, no power source, no flame -- just more expensive materials in the last two feet would actually raise the temperature, would you believe me? Would you even bother to take the temperature of the air on either side of that last 2 feet of duct?

Tim

...dammit! The HVAC guy got me again...he used granite in the last two feet of mine..

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

...dammit! The HVAC guy got me again...he used granite in the last two feet of mine..

Granite is no good. Too porous. Makes the heat grainy.

Tim

 

[MylesBAstor]

I don't see any specific claims made for the audio quality of the wall-warts. They apparently charge $125 per wart, though. Assuming that the buy-in price of the wart is a few dollars in bulk, the rest is obviously handling, warehousing, administrivia etc, and the cost of the custom sticker. Kind of like the markup on car parts...


Personally, I'm not in the target market. I have enough IEC power cables to last the rest of my life. (Not that long to wait...) 16 ga conductors, braid and foil shielded. Built back in the early 80s and shipped with IBM PCs and other IT equipment. Individually tagged with part number, modification version, batch number and manufacture plant and date. No-one liked them because they were so stiff and heavy. Wonder if I could get a good price for them on eBay...

How about the rest of your system just for reference since you've not listed any associated components?