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High priced power cords, koolaid?

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#101
R Baer said:
I'll tell you what, not every engineer writes off power cords as snake oil. The engineer I currently have working on our amp is a big believer in high end cables and power cords. This guy is an electrical engineer with decades of experience building and servicing equipment, as well as being a FOH engineer for many of the biggest names in the jazz circuit some years back. He used to build power amps used in some of the finest recording studios in the world. In other words, not a guy with no technical background making unfounded claims. I've always blown it off as snake oil myself, but he has show me a few things that have opened my eyes.

I'm still not convinced there is anything magical going on with a $400 power cable, but I do believe that at some point the lack of quality in some cheap cable made with crappy components, will become evident when compared to a superior made product. In our amp, for example, our engineer had me upgrade from the cheap amp cord that come with most amps to a better built 14ga power cord. Nothing boutique, mind you, just a better quality cord with better connectors and heavier wire. We also re-did the wiring between the power supply, power amp and speakon jacks with better board connectors and heavier gauge, silver plated, mil spec, teflon jacketed wire and the difference was clearly audible. The amp with the new wiring has a little bigger bloom to the low notes and a little better clarity in the top end. Sure, the difference is fairly subtle, but it's definitely audible. Do I have a bunch of scientific data to back up that claim. Nope, not worth spending my time, or money on. My ears tell me the different wiring is worth implementing, so that's that. Very unscientific, I know, but if I like how something sounds, I don't really care about the science behind it.
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What would Richard Feynman do?... He would set up an experiment.

The science is very simple. Voltage drop into an unregulated power supply. You can just monitor the rails to test this.

Newbies always ask what size amp to get. Some guys say that you need 1000 Watts, but only turn it up to 1 or 2 for headroom. But they have the same power cables as 15 Watt practice amp.

The power that gets to the rails is the issue. An undersized cable will have a drop when current is pushed. A variation in rail voltage is audible. Nothing for the net to get excited about.

It is snake oil when someone takes a $5-10 power cord from Newark or Mouser and surrounds it with a bunch of hype, then sells it for $150. Companies that gouge the customer don't stay in business long.
 
#102
wcriley said:
I've been experimenting with using #5 rebar for speaker and AC cable. My findings, so far:

It's difficult to attach Speakons or IEC connectors to 5/8" diameter steel rods.

Having the proper amount of rust build-up on the rebar improves the conductivity, perceived placement within the stereo field, sweetness in the low mids and upper treble, and erectile function.

Rebar that contains recycled radioactive watse sounds better than rebar containing recycled car parts. Recycled kitchen appliances fall somewhere in the middle.

Reversing the direction of just one of the bars after the electrons have been aligned causes a noticeable difference in low frequency content.

The coating on rebar used for highway construction signicantly reduces line noise in the 60Hz and 120Hz region. This means that the amplifier expends less energy cleaning up the line voltage, allowing more energy to be available at the output.
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LOL!!!!

Now that's funny!
 
#103
Agreed but there is a little company called Monster which has done a great job MARKETING their product to consumers. A lot like another marketing company - Bose.

Incredible Marketing companies. Just amazing.

PT Barnum was right.
 
#104
WingKL said:
The only difference I can think of that an expensive power cable would make would be if it was compared to a cable that is of a smaller gauge wire or has a connector that did not work as well. If the cable has any sort of electronics then it would also make a difference as the electronics could be doing power factor correction and that does make a difference to the amount of current the cable has to carry.
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You have to look at the rail voltages out of the power supply when drawing a lot of current. I'm sure that they will sag with the smaller gauge wire. It is simply V=IR, no mystery.
 
#107
We're talking about bass amps right? Hardly a critical application. If expensive power cables made that much difference, I'm sure you'd find well-informed owners/operators of medical, communications and security services queuing up for them. Are they?
 
#108
bongomania said:
You will not find any "oldest truth" like that in any electronics textbook. First, the AC power from the wall is converted to DC in an amp before it reaches the amplification circuits, and all "noise", phase variations, and other irregularities that had been on the AC line are eliminated by the DC rectification. Second, most amps contain noise filtration in the power lines, making any noise-reduction from a cable redundant. Third, changing a noise-randomized "dirty" sine wave into a pure sine wave requires a lot more correction than could ever be provided by special arrangements of special wire in the cord. Fourth, not one of the high-end power cords has been independently proven to have lower resistance than a standard cord. Lastly, there is ZERO connection between resistance and "cleanness". Resistance affects the "amount" of electrical signal, but it does not dirty the signal, and having less resistance does not clean the signal.
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This is all anyone needs to know when trying to determine the effectiveness of a power cable- standard or boutique. There are quite a few other (and PROVEN) factors at work that trump ANYTHING being done by the power cable. good post, bongomania.
 
#109
packhowitzer said:
This is all anyone needs to know when trying to determine the effectiveness of a power cable- standard or boutique. There are quite a few other (and PROVEN) factors at work that trump ANYTHING being done by the power cable. good post, bongomania.
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+1 Amazing how much drama on this subject. With passive basses and instrument cable, OK, there are at least some differences in capacitance that can affect the top end response a bit. That has been measured and shown a zillion times (most nicely by Bongo!). However, there is NO relationship between cost of cable and capacitance.

Power cables. I guess if you have an extremely high gauge power cable with a long distance between amp and outlet, there could be some issues. However, that is typically rectified by a lower gauge cable, with is probably pennies a foot in cost.

Edit: The GREAT news is, hopefully threads like these keep some from wasting money. However, if you are convinced for some reason that a very expensive cable will improve the performance of your rig, the ONLY downside is spending more money than you need to. It will 'do no harm' at worst. At best, if nothing else, it will make you feel better and maybe provide a bit better reliability over time, due to the fancy, heavy duty connectors, etc.
 
#113
KJung said:
+1 Amazing how much drama on this subject. With passive basses and instrument cable, OK, there are at least some differences in capacitance that can affect the top end response a bit. That has been measured and shown a zillion times (most nicely by Bongo!). However, there is NO relationship between cost of cable and capacitance.

Power cables. I guess if you have an extremely high gauge power cable with a long distance between amp and outlet, there could be some issues. However, that is typically rectified by a lower gauge cable, with is probably pennies a foot in cost.

Edit: The GREAT news is, hopefully threads like these keep some from wasting money. However, if you are convinced for some reason that a very expensive cable will improve the performance of your rig, the ONLY downside is spending more money than you need to. It will 'do no harm' at worst. At best, if nothing else, it will make you feel better and maybe provide a bit better reliability over time, due to the fancy, heavy duty connectors, etc.
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I think that Drama comes from people not understanding all of the issues involved.

I do hope to keep people from buying overly expensive stuff. Anyone that wants a good cable, can go to Newark or Mouser.

But I am screwing myself. I should be buying $10 cables from Newark, and then undercutting the guys that are selling them for $150.

:crying:
 
#115
dincz said:
We're talking about bass amps right? Hardly a critical application. If expensive power cables made that much difference, I'm sure you'd find well-informed owners/operators of medical, communications and security services queuing up for them. Are they?
Click to expand...

No. I work in two of those fields, we do sometimes concern ourselves with connector quality, wire gauge. But not always. It depends based on current draw of the equipment and if we need funky features like locking plugs. And our moods as designers when we are writing specs.

We also go out of our way to use good practices in plant design as far as power distribution is concerned.

I'd love to say power cords do or don't matter, but I can't. Nothing short of real blind testing can answer the subjective side of that question. And, I don't know if even that has any significance anywhere than in a band setting!The process has to be free of any emotion or preconcieved ideas. We are so amazingly predisposed to fall into the traps of suggestability that this gets really hard.
 
#117
You guys crack me up. I could care less about whether any one here believes me.

I play more varied gigs on electric and upright than almost anyone involved in this conversation. I did not WANT this to sound better. I used it extensively on gigs here also.I rarely bring it out--the difference is there but I tend to leave cables at gigs!

I also am very involved in high end audio. I've tried many "super" cables and definitely found them to be "snake oil". I even tried a $2000 audiophile power conditioner that was 2 pieces weighing over 100#. Made everything sound worse.

I was in Italy and an engineer gave me a $300 guitar cable to try. It did sound different. The bass was bigger and the highs were more transparent. But it was too loose in the bass. My $20 home made Canare GS6 cable sounded a lot better. He agreed.

This makes me think about a new speaker line I'm making. Everyone said that the claims would only be considered true if I had measurements to back them up. Which are coming slowly but surely. A couple of the naysayers showed up at a Lakland GTG and others came to my house. Their comments were "they can't do this!" But they agreed that they did.

When I tried that power cable I knew off the bat that it would be "snake oil". But EXPERIENCE proved that to not be true. But apparently---real world experience is much less valid than measured data!
 
#118
Here's a link to a pretty well done test (although maybe not pefect):
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_11_4/feature-article-blind-test-power-cords-12-2004.html

Summary of results:
"The total number of correct answers was 73 out of 149, which amounts to 49% accuracy. That is no more accurate than flipping a coin, and therefore, no statistically significant detection of power cable differences.

Test participants were asked to rate themselves as to how much of an audiophile they considered themselves to be. ... The self-proclaimed hardcore audiophiles got 48% correct; the rest got 50% correct. Again, no significant differences based on whether or not a listener felt he was an audiophile or not."
 
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