The prices for high end smartphones are high, but you pay for R&D and software also. I never understand the outrageous prices for cables, and I would never spend so much. Cable brands like Nordost, Shunyata, MIT, Transparent Cables, MasterBuilt Audio etc always say the build the ultimate and best cables. Who believes this?
I don’t have experience of ‘high end’ cables, as I’ve never had a system ‘worth’ that much. But after getting my first entry system (mid range Cambridge Audio CDP and Amp, Dynaudio speakers), I replaced the stock kettle leads with homemade leads using oversized, shielded (to ground plug pin, as you get here in the uk) wires, and the cheaper wattgate connectors. I also used plugs with silver plated pins. The difference was subtle on the amp, quite pronounced on the CDP. I also made one for my first half decent LCD TV at the time. The difference in the picture quality was not subtle at all, it was pronounced. These differences were noticed by my partner who had no real interest in what I’d been making, or any expectations of improvement. As for ‘high end’ - hmm bit skepticle I’d make the same differences again spending much more money, however I don’t have a system good enough could be improved that much again anyway! Just my story.
Skywalker had some issues with noise in the technical building on the ranch, the hydras definitely helped us out there . . . .but that was it, we never used their interconnects or power cables . . .or even the hydras in any other buildings where noise was not a problem. Also kind of funny- the quote on Shunyata's site from Skysound is from Clayton Wood- Clayton and I both left Lucas in 2012, so I wonder if the Shunyata stuff's still being used at this point.
Why not and who's to define what "obscene" is? People work hard for their money. They should be able to decide to spend thousands on a power cord if they want to.
I personally couldn't care less if you or anyone else spend thousands 'on a power cord'. It's actually pretty funny. Joke is on you, i suppose? Since you can typically get properly sized quality power cords for FREE, i'll definite 'obscene' as anything over $20 just because you asked.
I agree with you Lee! What you buy and how much you spend is your business and yours alone. And I also think you shouldn't have to justify it to anyone.
Power cords on all my equipment are hard wired so the the point is moot for me anyway. Don't forget that no matter what power cord is used, the user will still be "stuck" with whatever existing wiring the manufacturer used internally, and unless this is also replaced, the advantages of upgrading the external cable alone become all the more questionable.
Read Ayn Rand’s philosophical writing to understand what an “objectivist” is, then stop misusing the word. Nobody ever stated - at least, I’ve never stated - that if DBT never happened, then the sound was the same. Not once. Ever. You mischaracterize and misstate facts with great abandon, a method of communication that is less than useful and a poor thing for a journalist to do (even a part-time one). What I want to know is why someone perceives that the use of a particular cable seems to them to cause a difference in sound. I want to know how the difference seems to be achieved compared to the prior use of some other cable. Every time that I swap cables for something allegedly inferior without telling anyone (but which cable still meets the low DC loop resistance and low impedance needed for speaker cables for example), the difference is never noticed. Same is true for AC power cables. Every time I then subsequently tell someone that a cheaper and/or less well-reviewed cable was substituted, a certain percentage of so-called audiophiles in the group then proclaim, “Ah yes, I thought I heard a difference but I was just taking time to tease out the subtleties.” Of course that’s monumental BS - a willfully non-rationalist audiophile claiming to hear what nobody can hear - and face-to-face with them it’s plainly evident they’re momentarily scrambling to cover up their little embarrassment. In any other discipline or hobby of pursuit it’s called BS. Only audio product reviewers and marketing-soaked audiophiles insist otherwise. All audiophiles should be excused, but all the reviewers should be ashamed of themselves. I want to know how a room and a sound system measure before a change is made. Then I want to sit down and listen to the system. Then I want someone to make a single change that I don’t know about so that such a change can either be evident or not. Only after the change has been made and I’ve been listening for some time is anyone - especially reviewers and the product makers themselves - allowed to ask me questions. If I haven’t noticed anything - if collectively the members of the accompanying listening group haven’t noticed anything - then the product is likely to be BS. If the room and system are then re-measured and no meaningful difference (that is not attributable to instrument error) is found, then the product is definitely BS. Of course you can share your subjective opinions about various products, but only after you learn the basics of human thinking and perception It’s not hard to learn. As a journalist - especially as an audio journalist - I think you have bear that responsibility, like it or not. You have to tell the most accurate truth you can find. The first thing any reviewer (or audiophile or anyone) should learn is that he’s the easiest person to fool. It applies to me, you and everyone else.
"It's easier to fool people than it is to convince them they have been fooled" -Attributed to Mark Twain but unverified. And yes, the views held by the audio fan are often worlds apart from those of the audio scientist.
I gotta say, the single biggest improvement I ever made in my home recording studio was switching to balanced from unbalanced. About 15% of the noise just totally dropped out... and that was something I could hear and also see on a meter, so it wasn't imaginary. Canare L-4E6S StarQuad cable and Neutrik connectors were always my choice as well, and they're not crazy/expensive. Gordon Holt of Stereophile was fond of that aphorism as well.
Where precisely did I say anything about price? I was simply explaining the mechanism - which has been well understood by designers of professional measurement systems for decades. They use double or triple box shielded mains power transformers for that reason. Which is why no-one in the audio business uses them - they are expensive and need deep knowledge to apply effectively. So they use a simple toroidal transformer, and leave it up to the customer to screw around trying to deal with the sonic effects of power line RFI. What you *actually* do is understand the mechanisms and work the problem. Not chuck money at it randomly.
Well said. The only caveat is that an AC power cord - at any price from the cheapest to the most expensive goofiness from Siltech or Nordost, etc. - is still just a linear device; a piece of wire that cannot be a filter. A component maker can add an AC inlet (line) filter to help get rid of common mode RFI generated by noisy equipment or noisy power sources. But an AC power cord can’t because it’s just a dumb, linear device. Some AC power cord makers go so far as to use braided shielding, so-called static drains, and other nonsense, but RFI does not enter through AC cables. It creeps in through equipment connection points and noisy power supplies and other sources, and is then passed along from component to component by connected power cords. Every competent component maker incorporates RFI filtering in his component power supply precisely for this very well (and long understood) reason. Again though, no AC power cord can filter out RFI. A typical RFI inlet filter is made up of a bifilar choke plus a couple of capacitors in parallel. The choke prevents high-frequency components from getting into the power supply or going back into the AC power lines. The capacitors force the radio frequencies to become common mode, while the choke provides a series impedance to block the high-frequency signals from getting through. An AC power cord can’t do any of that because it’s just a dumb piece of wire.
Not quite. The supply line to the wall socket has a characteristic impedance, and the power cord to the equipment has a different characteristic impedance. So you essentially - at RF - have a comb-like filter determined by the impedance mismatch and cable length. The frequency of the nulls depends on the romex/twin-and-earth (pond side dependent terminology) in the wall and the construction of the power cord. If you get lucky one of the nulls will coincide with the principle RFI frequency(ies). The one thing that this does not help with (to first order) is common mode. But a ferrite clamp on the power cord deals with that. With careful choice of the ferrite to have maximum loss at a frequency range of interest. Which is why EMC labs have a wide choice of different clamps to put on cables into an RF anechoic chamber.
The key phrase is, “If you get lucky...” so I’d hesitate to hold out hope that some so-called audiophile AC power cord can ever, under any circumstances resolve such a rare, very low energy issue. What you’re describing is not well-supported as an audible issue, and is certainly not anything that can negatively affect a component’s internal power supply or even slightly tax its RFI filter. As for external ferrite chokes, they’re useful when clamped onto low voltage DC power supply cables and USB cables that carry a power line. They’re far less useful - possibly entirely useless - clamped onto the exterior of an AC power cord. However, ferrite chokes are sometimes used inside some component power supplies. Makers of so-called audiophile AC power cords sometimes talk creatively about how an AC signal measures at the output of a standard AC cable vs the output of the fancy AC cable. Some of them actually proclaim measured ‘improvements’ that are almost entirely indistinguishable from instrumentation error. But, the power cord makers never talk about measured differences at the output of a component’s internal power supply, which is the only measurement point that counts. No matter what external AC power cord is being used, the DC output of the component’s internal power supply remains unchanged.
OK - I license a design of power cable that verifies broadband 10dB to 30dB differential mode attenuation from 100kHz to 1GHz as compared to a kettle lead. Without any series components or ferrites. Tested here EMC testing facility for CE mark accreditation in the automotive industry It even offers modest common mode attenuation, but over a narrower bandwidth of 10-100MHz. If you think that audio power cords offer insignificant performance increase within measurement error as compared with a kettle lead, knock yourself out.
I think your statement and comparison are rashly made. If you insist on setting up a straw man (i.e., the slang reference “kettle leads”, known in North America as standard component cable or IEC cable) just to knock it down in favour of your own automotive cable, knock yourself out. Strictly speaking, a plain IEC type 13 connector used on standard component AC power cords is less heat-resistant than the IEC type 15 connector used on an actual lead supplied with a kettle. As any engineer will tell us, proper grounding and shielding is the cheapest and one of the most effective methods to reduce EMI in a system. That means shielding electric motors, compressors and various other EMI sources, in addition to ensuring they are correctly grounded/earthed. EMC, the organization to which you linked, does product testing based on a Declaration of Conformity (DOC). If the DOC is approved and the product is subsequently verified to meet its DOC, then a CE mark will be issued for that product. Some obvious questions come to mind. For example, what parts of your automotive DOC have anything to do with performance of AC power cables for home audio components (which is what we’re discussing here)? If your power cable was tested for and received a CE conformity marque and you later added marketing about differential mode attenuation, that is nice but it had nothing to do with EMC’s testing. If the differential mode filtering was part of your DOC submission and was also actually tested and verified by EMC, then you should publish those results and verifications post-haste. In any case, congratulations if you received your CE marque. It’s interesting also that you’re claiming measurable differential mode attenuation from 100kHz-1GHz for your own cable compared to a standard cable. Here’s a relatively recent and highly technical paper from the IEEE on your specific field of interest - differential mode EMI filter design: https://www.pes-publications.ee.eth...ications/Abstract_IEEE_Transactions_Raggl.pdf As you will read in the technical paper, the IEEE engineers who collaborated on the subject needed a lot more than a length of AC power cord to accomplish simplified EMI filtering. You claim to have accomplished it with a piece of power wire. I think that’s something that all the engineers I know will think is quite remarkable. You really, really need to publish in one of the IEEE journals and you really, really need to patent your design. Now can you point to any of the high-end audio cable makers that have submitted their AC power cords for UL, CSA or CE testing? Frankly, I think very few such submissions will occur until Canada, the U.S., the UK and the EU make such testing mandatory for home audio AC power cords. What at least some of the major so-called audiophile AC power cord makers may fear in such a situation is that mandatory testing of their products will also attract some FTC focus, CAC focus and other government-based consumer protection focus on the technically unsupportable marketing associated with their products.
I did not say this was an automotive design. It isn't. And since it is proprietary and licensed to a single manufacturer I definitely cannot say any more. However, the fact that the manufacturing relationship has been in place for ten years is I think clear evidence of the effectiveness. They certainly would not have entered into a licensing relationship without clear evidence from a superb test house. I only even mentioned it to respond to your assertion that the difference between power cables was lost in measurement noise. 3C can certainly test to whatever standards required (I have put space instrumentation through 3C in multi-week programmes with a book full of ESA requirements, that have absolutely nothing to do with CE). Since the evaluation of this cable design was limited to conductive and radiative emissions and susceptibility only, it is not, and is not needed to be CE approved. I have however put numerous products through full CE, and also ATEX approvals, so please don't teach me to suck eggs.
The link you provided to EMC specifically stated "EMC testing facility for CE mark accreditation in the automotive industry" so it made sense to conclude that your cable is related to the automotive industry. Nobody challenged anything about your cable or its design, but you seem to be defending it anyway. There's no need. As for your ten year-long manufacturing relationship being used as evidence of your design or product effectiveness, that's actually an informal logical fallacy called the argument from antiquity. All sorts of products with little or no value or that are relatively ineffective are manufactured and sold for even longer than ten years. Doesn't make the products any good. I'm not criticizing your product - I can't praise it or criticise it because I cannot possibly know anything about your secret product - just the 'evidence' you mentioned which isn't actually evidence and which sort of non-evidenciary presentation is all too common in the audiophile accessory business. My assumption is that your product has little or nothing to do with home audio AC power cords, but that it's an effective product in the application for which it is designed to be used. Since you can't say more about your proprietary product and the security/licensing agreement in place, it's unfair of me or anyone else to probe for more details. That's not what I posted. What I wrote was that some manufacturers of AC power cables have published measured differences in their cables (compared to standard IEC AC power cords), which differences are actually so tiny (when the scale of the measurements is noted) that they may be attributable to measurement error or the noise floor of the measuring instruments. You're reacting to arguments going on in your mind that are not actually taking place in this thread. You raised a couple of points based on your own experience, but it's still unclear exactly how your experience or your cable in any way relates to home audio AC power cords. Nobody is trying to teach you how to "suck eggs" as you put it, but I also don't think the background you've laid out about yourself is very instructive to other members reading this thread. It's probably best for you to acknowledge that nobody is actually fighting with you, and rather just try to get a handle on the way in which anything you've posted about yourself and your cable is related to home audio AC power cords. That would help make your point more clearly.
I absolutely agree that there is a whole lot of nonsense specification that are quoted for high and very high price AC power cables, and I also agree that many or most of them are no different to a regular cheap power cord (in UK-speak kettle lead). I also accept that it is a bit unfair to state the RF attenuation of my cable (assembly) without supplying any supporting information, which alas I can not. But regarding 3C Test, if you have a look at tabs behind the front banner you will get a more comprehensive view of the breadth of their capability. Particularly "We offer specialist testing services from DC for Emissions and field strengths up to 600V/m for Immunity. We cover Military, Commercial, Medical, Automotive, Agricultural, Space, Marine, Rail, Aerospace, Industrial, IT, and Telecom equipment." Their mention of Space was my use of their services in that application, although the experience they gained might subsequently have been applied to other space projects. So although they have testing relationships with many automotive companies, and specific and very large test chambers for that use, and view that as a key strength, they do a whole lot more. And yes, FWIW it does have applications in audio, but the sole licencing agreement precludes that (alas!).
I worked in an AV store, and cables were the best tool to get the profit back on a sale when you've been beaten down on the price of the components. The second best tool is "power conditioners."
If people really wanted to hear an audible difference, they would put all their analog equipment in a Faraday Cage. Wendy Carlos did that when she moved into her New York City brownstone many decades ago. The city is an RF nightmare, and the cage is connected to a bunch of grounding rods. As I'm sure has been mentioned several times, why would one cord possibly matter when all of the AC wiring in the walls, going to the breakers, through the meter and back to the transformers are totally out of the control of the average user? I'm not a licensed electrician, but I'm in an apartment where every single outlet, wire, breaker and even the meter can and weatherhead was installed by me. (I was working under someone else's permit - and he verified all of my work.) So I have a valid opinion about electrical wiring.
While we may not see eye-to-eye on our respective opinions about boutique power cords, I appreciate your honesty in mentioning you have direct ties to said products; if only the others on this and other similar threads would do the same...
What happens the actual house, neighborhood and electricity company are not high end audiophile certified? Are pigs flying yet?
