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Power cords improve audio performance!

Pseudoscience is so prevalent in this world that I am sick of it. People will take a little science and blow it all out of proportion. I have just had a very big discussing with my born-again mother about evolution and how a radio station she listens to said evolution is a lie. My mother has no, no, no science background that all, so these woo-woo people can con her. This is the same thing with audio woo-woo. There is a great need for some people to have a world that as more to it then meets the eye, without knowing that it is already that will out all the woo-woo put out there, if only they would take to time to learn. But that will not happen, that would take work, time and the ability to throw out all the woo-woo that they believe in.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
My friend has a very expensive stereo (CD player costing over £7000 alone). All his kit is plugged into a power source which provides smoothed out AC apparantly and all connected via expensive silver cables.

We did a blind hearing with and without this supply and the effect was instantly noticable.
 
Someone else switched the power for you so you did not know which was which and then rated your responses.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
Yeah his girlfriend did the switching. Seemed like a reasonably obvious difference to me. Not a difference worth even £50 yet alone the price he paid but a difference.

Whether this was down to this supposed "power smoothing" box or the cables or pure chance or our imagination is impossible to say for certain.
 
If his 'high end' equipment is overly sensitive to mains interference, it's possible that his power source was really helping. That said, it's pretty shocking that expensive equipment often doesn't deal adequately with such interference - if sony can design a £70 cd player without such problems, a £7k CD should certainly be better made :)
 
I got much better sound from my virtual Mellotron after replacing the coffee-stained, cigarette-burnt cabinet graphics with shiny, clean new Formica pixels.
 
If Paulhoff wants to kill every audio woowooist, I merely want to butcher that unspeakable idiot who got it into his head to use one conductor for signal reference, to equalise chassis potentials and to shield the other conductor. Reall, coax for low frequencies!!! The resistance of the shield is THE way for ground currents (such as mains leakage currents coupling through the transformer) to break into your audio.
There's only one right way of interconnecting analogue audio equipment and that's balanced I/O per AES48. Anything else is creating a market for mains conditioners and fancy cables.
 
Killed by a very slow and painful death, thank you. If a girlfriend is changing the source when you are in the room, then it is not a double blind test.

Paul

:) :) :)

Soooo slow that their eyes pop.
 
jon said:
If his 'high end' equipment is overly sensitive to mains interference, it's possible that his power source was really helping. That said, it's pretty shocking that expensive equipment often doesn't deal adequately with such interference - if sony can design a £70 cd player without such problems, a £7k CD should certainly be better made :)
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That is the biggest thing about all this, it is so simple now a days to filler any crap coming in on the main lines.

Paul

:) :) :)

Not a difference worth even £50 yet alone the price he paid but a difference.
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This makes so scense to me at all, a instantly noticable difference to one not worth the money.
 
Why, because I write what everyone is afraid to. Geeeeeee

No the change is made when you are out of the room and she is not there when you come in. She keeps notes on what is in line each time and you keep notes on each time you listen. Then after the test you compare.

Paul

:) :) :)

Would murder be better then just plain kill.
 
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That would certainly insure blinding (especially if the room has 2 doors and experimenter and subject use different ones with a "blanking delay") but I would recommend a switchbox and a PC :)
 
Splossy said:
My friend has a very expensive stereo (CD player costing over £7000 alone). All his kit is plugged into a power source which provides smoothed out AC apparantly and all connected via expensive silver cables.

We did a blind hearing with and without this supply and the effect was instantly noticable.
Click to expand...

That to me would be a big difference, but that is me. You do not know how many times my friend would notice a change right from the start when he does anything, so what is the big problem now with a minute in-between the listening unless there is nothing to really hear.

Bruno Putzeys said:
That would certainly insure blinding (especially if the room has 2 doors and experimenter and subject use different ones with a "blanking delay") but I would recommend a switchbox and a PC :)
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But don't you know, the first thing to come out of the audiophile's mouth would be that the switchbox would be introducing a sound change that will throw off his testing.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
Splossy said:
My friend has a very expensive stereo (CD player costing over £7000 alone). All his kit is plugged into a power source which provides smoothed out AC apparantly and all connected via expensive silver cables.

We did a blind hearing with and without this supply and the effect was instantly noticable.
Click to expand...

With supply, amplifier works. Nice sound.

Without supply, nothing works. No sound.

Yep, certainly very noticeable.
 
Bruno Putzeys said:
If Paulhoff wants to kill every audio woowooist, I merely want to butcher that unspeakable idiot who got it into his head to use one conductor for signal reference, to equalise chassis potentials and to shield the other conductor. Reall, coax for low frequencies!!! The resistance of the shield is THE way for ground currents (such as mains leakage currents coupling through the transformer) to break into your audio.
Click to expand...

And baseband video... Hum bars, anyone?

There's only one right way of interconnecting analogue audio equipment and that's balanced I/O per AES48. Anything else is creating a market for mains conditioners and fancy cables.
Click to expand...

There have been fads for balanced connections (I refuse to call them "interconnects"; that name was coined by the "high end" cable marketers when the business got started in the early 70s, because they just couldn't sell anything called a "patch cable" for any extra money) in high-end audio for some time, but they never managed to replace the awful old RCA/Cinch plugs.

Funnily enough, they never proposed using balanced I/O in the place it was needed most: From the phono cartridge to the preamp!

Fact is that in most home a/v installations the unbalanced connections don't really do much audible harm, and balanced I/O does increase costs, and of course the low end of this market is very price- and margin-sensitive and RCA/Cinch connectors are really really cheap. But on those rare occasions where they do cause problems, you're just sort of stuck.

It gets really bad when home gear gets dragged into the pro or semipro environment and expected to work well with long cable runs, ungrounded plugs plugged into multiple circuits' outlets, connections to pro gear, etc.
 
As I have written somewhere before. If the audio signals going from the amp to the speakers were changed by the wire as many audiophiles who buy into the woo-woo think then when I transmit on the 440 MHz ham band I would be all over the spectrum and the FCC would be coming down on me. Of course this does not happen to either. Isn’t funny that only audio seems to have a problem with metal for these people.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
If ones eyes can be fooled, so can ones ears.

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Paul

:) :) :)
 
Splossy said:
My friend has a very expensive stereo (CD player costing over £7000 alone). All his kit is plugged into a power source which provides smoothed out AC apparantly and all connected via expensive silver cables.

We did a blind hearing with and without this supply and the effect was instantly noticable.
Click to expand...


try keeping the power source but replacing the expensive silver cables with regular copper ones.

A good UPS (one that protects against voltage sags as well as outages) will provide a decently clean AC signal. If the equipment is that touchy and the power that poor then this could indeed have an affect, although a double blind test would be better than a blind test to confirm.

The silver cables are doing crap though.
 
Mr. Skinny said:
I think power chords can greatly enhance and audio performance. Take, for instance, the Kinks "You Really Got Me". That G5 - F5 riff really grabs the listener at the begining of the song. :cool:
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My Deity, you must have been communing with me because that is what I thought when I read the thread title :D :D :D :D

*Incinerates owls for Lord HighEmperor SkinnyGod*
 
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