I wish I could remember where I saw it, but there was an article about this. Something to do with sound wave propagation through the denser humid air. I suspect that heat definitely has an effect of some kind. Though again I’d stress that we need to remember the human element here, we are such fragile things when it comes to memory and experience and the environment can completely change how we perceive things, often having nothing to do with the experience itself, just our perception of it.
Good example, I cracked open a whisky the other night. One of my favourites from when I first got into whisky, notmally sweet, Sherry heavy and woody, it tasted bitter, synthetic, like burned rubber.
Had the whisky changed, of course not. But a combination of my mood and what I’d eaten before influenced my experience. I had it again a few days later and it was exactly as I expected. Reality is the whisky hadn’t changed one bit, but I had
The same is true of how we hear hifi. How susceptible we are to mood, environment and the power of expectation bias. Very rarely does Any of this nonsense have anything to do with the kit. If you can learn to free your mind of that way of thinking, the hobby becomes much easier and you can get back to the music.
This makes little sense to me. We simply can’t get rid of our mood, environment and expectation bias so we need to accept that they influence every single note we hear and live with that. That’s the only way to truly enjoy music. What good it does to me thinking how every component in my setup measures if I just like what I hear?
I will never consider anything Mcintosh, overpriced bling. As for those stands, much more economical to make it yourself, for less than 5% of that cost.
A very interesting and surely potentially emotion involving discussion . I neither have the money nor the believing to pay extra for special power cables, nor for high quality audio hardware at all (Teufel Concept E Magnum PE fed mostly from notebook with video streams and MP3 ), so my ears won’t hear any difference surely, whether there is one or not.
Just let me throw in a study (there have been made several similar ones) where Oenology students have been easily tricked by serving them white wine with red colour: They suddenly found tastes of red berries and such, believing it is red wine, and note what they are studying is later used (a.o.) to do this professional wine testing, the words which they write onto the bottles later etc . Our mind and senses are extremely vulnerable to tricks and bias, so I fully agree with everyone who claims that subjective reports about a sound quality improvement, whether on own systems or demonstrations, cannot be taken as objective prove, not at all, not even a tiny little bit . But that doesn’t prove that it is not true either, and even if not, it doesn’t mean that paying extra for solid power cords is a bad decision even if someone has a subjective improvement as result only. Finally if it makes you happy, it was totally worth it, just don’t pay more than you can without causing you trouble on other ends . It’s like with Homeopathy, while there is zero serious scientific evidence (oh, I may open a can of worms ), if a little bead of sugar triggers your body and immune system (which is scientifically proven reacting to subjective emotions and mental states) to get well quicker, without the downsides of antibiotics and similar, then this is great.
Right from the scientific point of view, while a cable alone cannot flatten voltage fluctuations from the electricity grid, it can be better or worse shielded from affecting nearby analogue audio cables, especially the connectors, not sure whether this makes a noticeable difference as long as you do not stir power and audio cables. Of course a cable can have higher or lower voltage drops, so generally an as short as possible and well separated from analogue audio cables totally makes sense. But power cords for hundreds of thousands of USD/EUR… well, at some point I would say better donate that money to local/global social/medical charity organisation and the good feeling of helping others with your obvious abundance when even thinking about paying such amounts for power cords should serve you much more joy and peace of mind than the power cord will ever be able to .
This is the reason why you demo equipment for a long period of time and then remove it and plug the old component back to see if anything actually was different.
Well the other option is to read few reviews on ASR and then order Topping since nothing can beat it anyway and be happy for the rest of your life. I prefer to demo gear in my setup and make decisions based on that. If I like what I hear, I might buy it if it’s in my budget. If not, back it goes to dealer. To me this is part of the hobby and I enjoy the process and experience.
There’s nothing wrong with this approach. I prefer to get on with listening to music than chasing down the next latest and greatest piece of equipment or accessory.
Humid air is less dense than dry air, since water vapor is lighter than air.
Speed of sound in air, and with it the perceived pitch of a tone, rises with rising temperature and rising relative humidity.
Temperature has a much larger influence than relative humidity.
Example:
from 20 to 40°C and 0%rh__: 343.36 to 354.83m/s
from 20 to 40°C and 100%rh: 344.62 to 358.93m/s
Standard pitch of A at 20°C = 440Hz
Standard pitch of A at 40°C = 454.76Hz
Loudspeaker bass tuning does decrease with less stiff membrane suspension due to temperature increase, see tests done by Klippel
Too complex for me to weigh one phenomenon against the other to infer the net change, though.
EDIT:
Ooops, off topic I guess…
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Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
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Can you pick on some other brand? Like SMSL? It looks like you’re trying to make Topping the McDonald’s of DACs. I have both Topping and SMSL in my house, maybe that helps.
. I neither have the money nor the believing to pay extra for special power cables, nor for high quality audio hardware at all (Teufel Concept E Magnum PE fed mostly from notebook with video streams and MP3 
), so my ears won’t hear any difference surely, whether there is one or not.
. But that doesn’t prove that it is not true either, and even if not, it doesn’t mean that paying extra for solid power cords is a bad decision even if someone has a subjective improvement as result only. Finally if it makes you happy, it was totally worth it, just don’t pay more than you can without causing you trouble on other ends 
