This is only mentioned in every single power cable thread for about dozen times.
Anyway, every metre matters. Car analogies are favorite among audiophiles so let’s say that you drive 100km trip and 98km of it is dirt road and last 2km is highway. Your trip is quicker and more comfortable with 2km of highway in the end compared to all 100km being dirt road.
You can obviously change all the wiring at your house if you like to go to extreme but I like to think that what comes from the socket is given and all I can do is make sure the last few metres are well taken care of. In apartment building there’s not much you can do to house wiring anyway.
This analogy is completely wrong. It’s not even analogy. It’s not about speed. If you want to have car analogy, it can be more like about fuel and seat comfort feeling. If you use 98 octane instead of 95, you will not feel more comfortable in seat.
The answer is so obvious, listen for yourself and decide whether you can trust what you hear, or dismiss it as a monetary lapse of reason. The deniers have created the perfect argument by confirming that their own bias is so strong that any difference they hear…well is in the mind. I urge you to listen my friends, don’t let your preconceived notions get in the way. You can do it, trust your hearing.
Trust your hearing to do what? To provide you with an objective measure of reality? To be the only means of judging the effectiveness of exotic power cables?
As has been said - not sure how many times now, but take the total number of posts in this thread and subtract yours and a couple of other peoples - people may well hear a difference. It’s not guaranteed, but it is possible. This is not being disputed.
However, if you read back through this thread you’ll find lots of scientific and objective reasons why people really shouldn’t trust their hearing when it comes to power cables. Short version: a) there’s an absolute and total lack of evidence to explain how a power cable could affect sound quality, and b) there’s a ton of evidence to suggest that cognitive bias is a pervasive feature of human nature and has absolutely nothing to do with ‘a momentary lapse of reason’. Incidentally, I’m assuming you meant momentary rather than ‘monetary’, though ‘a monetary lapse of reason’ is exactly what happens if you end up believing a thousand dollar cable can make a difference
So yep, “you can do it” - but maybe it’s not such a hot idea.
The path from AC outlet to the equipment has far more potential for interference than the path up to the outlet. Better cables can better reject the noise this interference causes.
The path from the outlet to the equipment wouldn’t be in the vicinity of anything that could cause interference. However, the cable running behind the wall and under the floor adjacent to the high current cables feeding the cooker, the washing machine, the tumble drier, the electric shower, or the feed to the outside workshop housing compressors, welders, table saw etc. is far more likely to pick up interference, no?
Interference with AC? Think of it as a 120 V “signal.” That already is several orders of magnitude greater than any audio signal potential, giving the AC “signal” an inherent interference rejection advantage.
David, So the tons of evidence, which nobody disputes, that cognitive bias is a pervasive feature of human nature, is your evidence that millions of audiophiles reporting differences when listening to power cables, is due to bias. This is your opinion only, as opposed to actual listening experiences by many, and should not be confused with evidence. The existence of social science is not an argument against what individuals or groups experience when reviewing audio components. You seem to very specifically restrict this bias to power cables! I would say an observation, and forming a hypothesis, in this case a listening experience noting differences in system tonal balance with various power cables is one of the first steps that may lead to scientific discovery. I would say your argument borders on antiscience and is littered with personal opinion, rather than anything concrete. Us audiophiles don’t make blind statements, we are prepared to demonstrate in group settings, in other words the first steps of accepted scientific process.
My two forays into power cables is Yellow power cord on my Bluesound pulse 2 and an ifI power supply for a Meridian MS 200.
The be honest, I never noticed any difference and I only use them now because they are there.
More seriously, the fact that there’s no science that lends any credence to any of your claims is not my “opinion” - it’s a summary of the facts. As has been mentioned before, the onus is on you, not me. You’re the one suggesting that you’ve discovered something that flies in the face of logic and science. I’m the one saying that there’s no evidence so you’ll have to prove it. That’s how science works. Anything else is just denial.
I think you’ll also find that I’ve said quite similar things with respect to ethernet cables and other bits of glitzy audiophilia.
OK, so by all means get on with designing a study to gather some evidence that will either confirm of deny your hypothesis. How about some blind testing? That’s a fairly well respected method that should prove ideal. Oh, wait, audiophiles don’t like blind testing
And I would suggest that your statement indicates a confusion about how the words antiscience, opinion, and concrete should be used in reference to my statements versus yours.
I’m really not sure how “demonstrate in group settings” adds much here. You were closer with your earlier statements regarding forming hypotheses, which can then be tested. Demonstrating that lots of people are subject to the same conceptual/cognitive biases doesn’t lend any weight to your argument … quite the opposite.
The circuits for a hi-fi, at least in the states, will not even be on the same circuit as a cooker. The power chord is bombarded with interference from the electronics themselves, fluorescent lights, and many more in very close proximity and no wall to block any of it. And, remember the noise generated by any computer within four feet is at least twice that caused by the same interference source eight feet away, four times the same source sixteen feet away, etc. The vast majority of interference sources are far enough away from the pre-outlet path, that their contribution is negligible.
I didn’t say a cooker would be on the same circuit. They aren’t here in the UK either, but all of the circuits originate at the consumer unit and the cables may run in parallel for some distance. Much more interference would be picked up here than from the outlet to the device.
This is one of the best examples of cognitive bias I have ever seen. This dude is a notorious cable hater. It does indeed summarise the sentiment of this thread.
Actually, he’s not a notorious cable hater. He’s a snake-oil hater. Take a look at his video on speaker cables. He uses Kimber 8TC. “Why?”, you might ask. Because it objectively measured better than the others he tested.
Could you clarify why you think this is the best example of cognitive bias you’ve seen? As far as I can tell it’s not any sort of example, let alone the best one, so I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on exactly how you think it applies.
Because the proof is in the pudding and I don’t see any eating. His comments are based on his own subjective reality, I don’t see objective input. He comes across as irrational, preconceived notions of power cables. At lot of generalisations , based on what he think a cable is capable of in audio systems, rather than actual listening experiences. If he confirmed that he evaluated quality cable A, B and C relative to the cable in the box and found no difference, I would have given him kudos, but all I hear is conjecture. This is a Classic case! Same as many comments on this thread. Preconceived notions of what people think the reasons are that audiophiles hear differences when evaluating power cables, and no desire or interest whatsoever of putting it to the test themselves, as admitted when challenged.
Douglas, did you watch the same video as I did? Did you miss the part where he tested the audio output using a standard cable and an audiophile cable with an Audio Precision analyser and could find no measurable differences in noise or distortion? It doesn’t get more objective than that.
Gene doesn’t have a subjective reality. His reality is firmly rooted in science and engineering. He used to work in communication electronics and as he stated in the video he spent 4 or 5 years in a RFI lab working on regulatory and compliance EMI mitigation. He probably knows more about the subject than everyone else on the forum put together.
His objective conclusion, based on years of engineering experience and testing, is that audiophile power cables are snake-oil.
Then you probably need to watch it again. At 3:26 he states “if a power cord really made a difference it would be something you could measure” which he follows up on at 4:05 where he shows the data from a particular cable comparison and states that none of the other exotic cables he’s measured made any difference to distortion or noise floor etc. I know @Graeme_Finlayson has already mentioned this, but I think it bears repeating - this video is about as objective as you can get. Testing → no empirical difference → objective and rational conclusion.
Sounds pretty conclusive to me.
See above.
Rewatch 8:10 to 9:15 where he discusses why reliable listening tests are highly problematic with respect to power cables. If that doesn’t convince you, do some research on auditory memory.
To reiterate my previous point: I don’t see this video as any sort of example of cognitive bias, let alone a “classic case”, so please feel free to have another go at explaining or justifying your claim. By the way, I’m perfectly happy for you to say that you dislike the video, or that you disagree with everything he says, but I don’t think that constitutes any sort of justification for making claims that are patently and egregiously false.
