Never seen such a serious power cord.I think one day I have to try some out to c if they do make a difference.
Audiophile power cords vs. the cables in your walls
- Thread starter Al M.
- Start date
I thought that aftermarket power cords were better for years until I went to a friends house. He has a vintage system and it sounded amazing. No fancy cables or power cords. It got me thinking.
Absent trying, you really have no basis for your beliefs. Goto Music Direct to dip your toes into the budget Shunyata Research (or other brands) water. Nothing to lose. 60 day money back. What brand IC's do you use in your system? The "same manufacture" concept has some merits.
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Hi Dave,
Good to hear from you my friend. You and I both know measurements do not tell the complete story. I did an AB years ago between a top Pangea power cord purchased through Audio Advisor with my CDP, which I'm sure would pass your "measurements / science" criteria, and my Shunyata Research equivalent. Not even close. Budget is a fair question and each person needs to decide how much they want to spend. Buying through Music Direct, you can always return with a full money back guarantee. No risk except your time to audition.
Good to hear from you my friend. You and I both know measurements do not tell the complete story. I did an AB years ago between a top Pangea power cord purchased through Audio Advisor with my CDP, which I'm sure would pass your "measurements / science" criteria, and my Shunyata Research equivalent. Not even close. Budget is a fair question and each person needs to decide how much they want to spend. Buying through Music Direct, you can always return with a full money back guarantee. No risk except your time to audition.
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Well, from a science point of view you simply have to sort out why a power cord might have an audible effect. I found out a long time ago that the power cord can have a measurable effect too. Its caused by the voltage drop across the power cord itself. This can rob an amplifier of output power. I've seen this happen where the amp lost a good 40 watts simply due to the voltage drop in the power cord! The thing to do if you want to know what's going on is measure the output power of the amp, its distortion and output impedance when you change out the power cord.
That's not exactly all there is to it though. Because most electronics use a power supply with a power transformer and rectifiers, you can get high frequency current issues too. This is because the rectifiers won't conduct until their input voltage exceeds the voltage on the filter capacitors that they feed. So you get spikes of current at the peak of the 60Hz AC waveform, which can be very short in duration, depending on the state of charge in the filter cap.
So now we have defined two areas where the power cord can have an effect. On the one hand it needs to minimize the voltage drop across it. OTHO it needs to do what while also being able to do that at some fairly high frequencies. If the cord can do both you'll hear it sounding better because the equipment will perform better. BTW it also follows that if the equipment has a low power draw without spikes of heavy current, the cord will have less effect.
Put another way, like everything else the power cords (and the wiring in the walls) obey Ohm's Law (Ohm's Law is not just a good idea- its The Law
).Well, from a science point of view you simply have to sort out why a power cord might have an audible effect. I found out a long time ago that the power cord can have a measurable effect too. Its caused by the voltage drop across the power cord itself. This can rob an amplifier of output power. I've seen this happen where the amp lost a good 40 watts simply due to the voltage drop in the power cord! The thing to do if you want to know what's going on is measure the output power of the amp, its distortion and output impedance when you change out the power cord.
That's not exactly all there is to it though. Because most electronics use a power supply with a power transformer and rectifiers, you can get high frequency current issues too. This is because the rectifiers won't conduct until their input voltage exceeds the voltage on the filter capacitors that they feed. So you get spikes of current at the peak of the 60Hz AC waveform, which can be very short in duration, depending on the state of charge in the filter cap.
So now we have defined two areas where the power cord can have an effect. On the one hand it needs to minimize the voltage drop across it. OTHO it needs to do what while also being able to do that at some fairly high frequencies. If the cord can do both you'll hear it sounding better because the equipment will perform better. BTW it also follows that if the equipment has a low power draw without spikes of heavy current, the cord will have less effect.
Put another way, like everything else the power cords (and the wiring in the walls) obey Ohm's Law (Ohm's Law is not just a good idea- its The Law
totally understood, but one need not spend 4-5 figures to accomplish this ! Thus my 'economics' part of the response !
Yes, I agree. A good power cord does not have to be really expensive, although if you want good connectors you'll still have to pay for them. But honestly spending 4 figures on a power cord doesn't make sense to me.
This is exactly why some enjoy using certain commodity power cables. They are actually doubling as resistive power conditioners.
This is also why they cause trafo buzzing on some amps and why some think many "high end" power cables have the same sound. They simply have much lower resistance vs the commodity power cords.
And these commodity cords are touted as a "reference". Lol...
I recently started offering what I think is the best value for the money PCs you can get. Pure copper contacts with rhodium plating, genuine Furutech plugs, 9g mil-spec wire w/ teflon insulation, $299!
I've sold a few but mostly, nobody is interested... I can tell you that the market for lower-priced high-value cables seems extremely limited. I can't understand this, so let me know if you have any ideas, but people only want to buy a company's highest end offerings. So if your budget is $299 for a PC people look for companies that offer $299 PCs as their highest end cable. I've tried different approaches but I find it difficult to sell any of my reasonably priced offerings.
It's frustrating for me I can't seem to sell my lower priced cables even though they are very competitive and IMO the best you can buy for the money. This might help you understand why an audio company focuses on their highest priced offerings, IME that's really all they can sell.
I'm at the point where I feel I need to start a whole new business in order to have any chance of selling these cables. So... it's not just the industry, the buying habits of audio enthusiasts is peculiar and not intuitive, and it doesn't lend itself to being able to sell a wide $-range of products.
Usually a transformer buzzing is caused by an interaction between the inductance of the transformer winding and the capacitance of the junctions of the rectifiers, resulting in a 'swept resonance'. Sometimes this can be exacerbated by noise on the AC line, in particular the 5th harmonic (300Hz in the US). A 5th harmonic on the line can be caused by a transformer on a telephone pole being run too close to its rating. The solution is 'snubbing' the rectifiers but you are really snubbing the transformer. Bypassing the rectifiers with the traditional 0.01uf cap won't do the trick and can actually make it worse. I'd be very interested to see this exacerbated by a power cord (not saying it can't happen, just never seen it)!
This is a phenomena of the Veblen Effect. Raise the price enough and they will sell.
I'm not sure why folks single out cables, IMO they are an easy target but the thought "snake oil" is an issue with cables and less of an issue with other components is absolutely not true.
An example... LEXICON disc player that's a bone-stock OPPO in a fancy box. You think this doesn't happen all over the place? That amps aren't simply relatively cheap modules bolted to a fancy case? It seems like you don't quite understand how many components are built these days...
I've been told certain power cables cause trafo humming. I'd guess unequal resistance on hot vs neutral?
With other PCs no trafo humming at all... I agree it's pretty odd.
I suspect that whomever told you that had no idea. Unequal resistance wouldn't do it unless the power was DC, in which case a power transformer wouldn't work. This is akin to the idea that fuses are directional, which they can't be because they would fail in an AC circuit right away.
I recently started offering what I think is the best value for the money PCs you can get. Pure copper contacts with rhodium plating, genuine Furutech plugs, 9g mil-spec wire w/ teflon insulation, $299!
I've sold a few but mostly, nobody is interested... I can tell you that the market for lower-priced high-value cables seems extremely limited. I can't understand this, so let me know if you have any ideas, but people only want to buy a company's highest end offerings. So if your budget is $299 for a PC people look for companies that offer $299 PCs as their highest end cable. I've tried different approaches but I find it difficult to sell any of my reasonably priced offerings.
It's frustrating for me I can't seem to sell my lower priced cables even though they are very competitive and IMO the best you can buy for the money. This might help you understand why an audio company focuses on their highest priced offerings, IME that's really all they can sell.
I'm at the point where I feel I need to start a whole new business in order to have any chance of selling these cables. So... it's not just the industry, the buying habits of audio enthusiasts is peculiar and not intuitive, and it doesn't lend itself to being able to sell a wide $-range of products.
Ahhhhh Dave your response speaks volume to the 'placebo' effect ! Could you just imagine someone spending 5k on a power cord, keeping it after their audition and NOT giving anything but the highest of praise !!
It doesn't require much technical knowledge... Buzz happens with one PC and not other PCs.
Honestly I'd need the cable and would have to measure it and look at what's it's doing on my scope to have a better idea.
The LEXICON mentioned has a much higher MSRP vs the functionally identical OPPO.
If you saw the prices of amp modules vs what the amps cost, DAC modules vs DACs, etc. you may change your mind on that!
It's just easy for people to pick on cables because all they see is wire and they have no idea what's going on inside the chassis of a component.
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