You should just wait 500hrs till solar panels will settle down to produce good audio quality
And NEVER switch the cable direction once your solar panels got burned in.
It took 700hrs to convince yourself that you hear difference?
I know, Rightā¦amazing! I am in awe of your powerful insights and deductions, wow!
It was ten years ago Douglas, that Furutech block is long gone Also Iām not a huge believer in burn-in, especially with cables. I do understand that tube amps and such might sound better with some warm-up time. Also if I borrow demo gear to try out, burn-in is usually done already. I test gear by doing quick switching back and forth first and If Iām unable to decide that way, I leave the new component in the setup for 1-2 weeks and then switch back.
My current power block uses Furutech wall plug and the power cables for my ATC actives have Furutech plugs on both ends. Cable is Oelflex FD891CY 3x2.5mm2 and this combo works very well. For the Linn ADSM I use the stock cable Linn ships it with. My current setup reacts much less to different power cables/blocks than my previous Naim stack.
I am a huge skeptic about burn in, directional properties, and magic sonic performances of cables.
This makes absolutely no sense, the electrical and molecular properties of cables do not work that way.
The properties that make audiophile cables sound fantastic and beyond belief, exist only in the strange things companies do to their cables, or claim to do to their cables.
Not a single cable manufacturer* can (and will) present a solid theoretical bases for the claims they make, because that hurts their business.
Just feeding āusā with marketing and bogus physics, āweā buy their stuff on their words.
I guess they are lucky to be in a business where there are no legal bindings on what they must deliverer and how.
Anyway, your system sounds better when you donate the $$$ you wanted to spend on $$$ cables to me (or a charity).
Being in the electronics and IT world for so long, this magic property voodoo feels just wrong, self sensured.
- I really doubt that the majority makes their cables themselves. Probably bulk ordered in China and decorated with sleeves and fancy things that look really audible, surely ordered in china as well.
Yep, never forget to let solar panels āburn inā for a lengthy period of time
Trouble is I canāt remember how it sounded before the burn in. In fact itās difficult to remember last week!
ACK
another aspect. Talk to the pro-audio guys. Literally those who create the music some audiophiles find only consumable through $$$$ cables. No fancy stuff there. Almost never. Decent, say Mogami products, yes. Never at a price point that is being discussed here.
Guess why?
Iāve said this many times before. You only have to look at pro-audio to see that āaudiophileā cables are unnecessary.
In the UK there are requirements to be truthful in advertising, however the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) will only take action if they receive a complaint.
They took action a few years ago against the Chord Cable Company for bogus claims around an āaudiophileā ethernet cable that the company could not substantiate.
I think that snake oil producers now learned how to ānot lieā so instead of proper specs. they say magical formulas like:
ācan improve overall system performanceā
āremoves more noise and distortion than most common productsā
ā22dB reduction from 30kHzā
So itās up to customer now if he judge by pricetag only or by real specifications and his own knowledge.
There are just few parameters cable can have and if manufacturer is not proudly declaring them then something is wrong.
Same if choose your speakers: indeed listen before buy is important (even they will sound different in professional listening room than at home) but normally there is clearly defined sensitivity, impedance, fq range, +/-3dB range, -6dB point, crossover, directivity,ā¦ so you know what to expect and if there are no specs. shown then something is suspicious. But showing cable parameters can be rarely seen in audiphile grade cables.
weasel-wording
Faith plays a large part in our day to day lives, but I donāt think thereās any need to bring religion into it - as @Bernd_Kurte mentioned, thatās a surefire way to risk causing offence. Faith is the moment to moment belief that what we take to be facts continue to be true. For example, I donāt wake up each morning with any need to prove that the law of gravity still exists, I just swing my legs out of the bed and expect theyāll reach the floor, rather than floating off towards the ceiling. Kuhnās idea of a paradigm might be a better term than faith, in this context at least - a set of theories that explain the way a particular subject is understood at a particular time. His idea of paradigm shift might also be useful as it goes a long way towards explaining why some people are so reluctant to let go of the idea that power cables donāt have any effect.
Agreed, itās a great book. My favourite chapter is the one about the twins who can calculate prime numbers in their heads. No direct relevance to this thread, but a fascinating story nonetheless.
Audiophile cables may be unnecessary, I know I will still be enjoying my system with orange power cables from my local garden center. Is the benefits really worth the cost? Probably not. However, the point of this thread is, can a power cable impact the the tonal balance of a system, yes it can. Opinions whether this is worthwhile is not relevant. Its OK to call in question some companies with bogus marketing strategies, and to question exorbitant prices, but to write Audiophile experiences of as imaginary on such a large scale, well that is really an argument against science. Is the starting point of a science project not a tangible concept that needs to be investigated, not written of as psychological mumbo jumbo in the minds of delusional audiophiles. Get real people.
Nobodyās writing them off, theyāre offering an alternative explanation to account for the facts. Yes, people hear a difference. No, itās not the cable.
There is no need to investigate something that privileges subjective biases over and above established scientific fact. The science has already been done
Cognitive bias is a well established, well researched, and widely accepted theory of human perception. Using terms such as āmumbo jumboā indicates, IMHO, that you still havenāt taken the time to investigate this.
Well, thatās an opinion until there is proof ā¦
I can agree with you on following if you agree.
Letās put on side āaudiophileā term now.
There are just 2 types of power cables:
- properly made fulfilling standards
- wrongly made (high resistance, poor shielding, intermitant contacts, wrongly soldered, high transient resistance,ā¦)
- no, they cannot change sound
- yes, they can change sound (insufficient current draw, interferrence,ā¦)
Now which cable do you have?
Sorry, missed this one. This is not large scale, itās a very small scale thing, confined to a small number of audiophiles. There are no photographers claiming that cables make a difference, no computer scientists, no electrical engineers, no manufactures of other high end electrical equipment, none of the engineers or scientist at NASA or CERN or any other prestigious center of scientific excellence have noticed any effects. Just a bunch of audiophiles.
How many of them actually donāt care and listen to music on cheap earbuds. Many of them are not aware because they have never listened to high end audio systems, so most probably they simply donāt know.