I won a Virtual Dynamics Power 3 Cable

[greenboy]

If the OP want's to use this cable fine, I don't care.

Likewise. Just like the laundry balls being multilevel marketed some years back.

I'm far more cocerned others will take some flower prose posted about perceived differences to be fact and actually spend money for something like it

Yeah, buy a laundry ball for yourself for $50 and believe the atomic and molecular nonsense in the prose, no big deal. But convince my friends and family to waste their money on something that could be accomplished by beating the laundry against a stone, and I want to say READ UP ON ACTUAL SCIENCE!

rather than spending the money on some change that will make an actual difference.

Like the arguably most non-linear and problematic filter in the signal chain, the loudspeaker? ; }

 

[Bassflute]

I usually set the intonation and do action adjustments on my students basses. Quite often, the tuner will say 'it's perfect' but my ears will tell me 'that sounds like ****', so I wind up redoing the intonation at the 15th and 17th frets, by ear, splitting the difference, and the bass then sounds as good as it can get. The measurements did not tell me what I needed to know - my ears did.

For those who care enough to know cabling makes a difference, and have been around long enough to know that yes, there are charlatans in the cabling industry, it is now a question of at what point is a cable good enough, and at what point does it become snake oil. I don't believe that all high-end cable companies are evil, and I still don't think we have reached the end of the technology, and that advances will and are being made. I am absolutely astonished that this power cable makes any difference at all, but it does.

Over the weekend, I A/B'd it with three students, plus a neighbour from downstairs who has nothing to do with music. They all heard a difference. And I will record some stuff and post it when I have time, I just don't know if you'll hear a lot of difference because of my relatively crummy mikes, and once I mix it down and compress it for the net, then coming through crappy computer speakers, I don't know if you'll hear what we are hearing. Then of course a whole bunch of jaded, cynical bozos will start saying I faked the test, etc. Anyway, it probably won't help.

In a nutshell, this is the differences we hear when plugging in the $305.00 'VD' Power 3 cable and A/Bing it with a regular music store $5.00 one:

1) Treble 'sweeter' and definitely less scratchy and harsh

2) Better and clearer low mids and mids

3) More and clearer bottom end

4) Less noise from the amp

5) Better dynamic response

6) Generally clearer and more accurate sound throughout.

Now, the only caveat I will say, and this is the last I'll post on the subject, is that these are subtle differences, some of my students and friends could not communicate what they were hearing, but they all acknowledged that it sounded different with the two cables, and then we talked about what they heard. No I wasn't 'coaching' them - I was trying to help them articulate an obscure concept to them.

IMHO, this thing works, I have no idea why. And I hear the difference the more I play with it.

I know what my rig sounds like - I play a lot. I do 3 - 5 gigs a week, sometimes more, sometimes less, I go to rehearsals, I teach on it. I know what it sounds like under normal playing conditions in all manner of acoustic environments. This cable, while ridiculous, expensive and obscene, makes a difference. Whether that is worth it to you or not, whether you are a subtle and sensitive enough player to hear it or not, well, that's your choice.

For the rest of you, indirectly calling us all idiots, well, that's just showing how badly your momma brought you up. As for the audio magazine whose first article blasts all wine connoiseurship as quackery, and then goes on to review a bunch of high-end audio gear as supposed experts, well, their faulty logic and crass ignorance lost me right there. Cabling works, it is important, and no one has the definitive answer to the troubling question: 'at what point does it become quackery?' I know a lot of high end studios that use specific cable throughout; I personally have talked to a LOT of engineers, producers, salespeople, repairmen about it, done a lot of reading over the years, and feel I am at this point quite knowledgeable and not easily led astray. But, I'm sorry, this ******* cable changes the sound of my rig for the better, in my opinion, and it is now backed up by students and friends whom I trust. Period. End of story. If you haven't tried it, you don't know, so **** the **** **.

I'm going to lend it to Psychic-pet for a week or two and let him try it out. And if Tom Bowlus is around, I've got a new deal for him: I'll pay shipping to his house. If he hears no difference, I'll pay for shipping back. If it does make a difference, he can pay for shipping back.

Come on Tom, you're going to need the write-offs anyway, man!

I'll post some genuine NON-FAKED audio when I have time. Whether you believe it or not, or can hear anything or not will be entirely up to you, but I won't ridicule you if you can't.

Some of you really need to grown up, and that has nothing to do with age.

Cheers,
Cameron

BTW: here's my rig live, no DI, miked stereo cabs throughout:

Link Removed

There's a very brief excerpt from a bass solo half-way through the video.

 

[KJung]

I usually set the intonation and do action adjustments on my students basses. Quite often, the tuner will say 'it's perfect' but my ears will tell me 'that sounds like ****', so I wind up redoing the intonation at the 15th and 17th frets, by ear, splitting the difference, and the bass then sounds as good as it can get. The measurements did not tell me what I needed to know - my ears did.

You are confusing accuracy of measurement with intonation approach. There are a million ways to set intonation (12th fret, averaging out at different points of the neck, the BF offset system, etc.) The strobe tuner will accurately and exactly measure each 'method'. What you prefer is personal and arbitrary.

You REALLY need to do at least the single blind experiment that a number of us are talking about. You will at first be depressed with the results, then enlightened, and then happy

 

[Bassflute]

You are confusing accuracy of measurement with intonation approach. There are a million ways to set intonation (12th fret, averaging out at different points of the neck, the BF offset system, etc.) The strobe tuner will accurately and exactly measure each 'method'. What you prefer is personal and arbitrary.

You REALLY need to do at least the single blind experiment that a number of us are talking about. You will at first be depressed with the results, then enlightened, and then happy

my students backs were to the amp. I didn't tell them which cable was which till they told me what they heard. Same with my friend.

There IS a difference. Everyone I have done it to could hear a difference.

Best I could do without eating up all their lesson time.

Cheers,
Cameron

 

[Bassflute]

Well, I'd love to give it a whirl, but you see, I don't have one of those handy dandy flame resistant suits!

FWIW, I have auditioned some expensive power cables in the past, and with bass/PA gear, I heard no difference. With home audio gear, my experience was that so long as the cables made good contact (and not all of them did), the differences were either non-existent, or negligible. I will say, though, that I did hear a benefit to using dedicated AC lines (nothing else on the circuit).

Tom.

Cheers,
Cameron

 

[Bob Lee (QSC)]

Hey Bill! What the!? You mean? PF Flyers didn't... Oh NO!

LOL! When I was 5 years old I really wanted a pair of PF Flyers sneakers because the commercial said they make you run faster and jump higher. After my parents bought me a pair, I spent the day running around the house and jumping, nonstop. I remember telling my mom "Wow! They really do make me run faster and jump higher!"

Well, at least the PF Flyers inspired me to run and jump more than I had before. In actuality, they probably weren't really any different than my previous pair of sneakers, but my expectation and perception was.

IMHO, $28 is a bit much to spend on a 12 AWG power cable, unless maybe it was 50 feet long or something. It is, after all, just a power cable.

 

[KJung]

my students backs were to the amp. I didn't tell them which cable was which till they told me what they heard. Same with my friend.

There IS a difference. Everyone I have done it to could hear a difference.

Best I could do without eating up all their lesson time.

Cheers,
Cameron

In this situation, the double blind methodology would be key

 

[Bassflute]

:
You REALLY need to do at least the single blind experiment that a number of us are talking about. You will at first be depressed with the results, then enlightened, and then happy

To counter this argument, the examples that I have used in other threads are:

1) After hearing the difference my front end Monster bass cable made to my sound, I ran out and bought two Monster speaker cables to replace the home-made thick ones I assembled from the thickest lamp cord that would fit through the phone plugs I was using at the time. After spending a ton of dough on them and plugging them in, I could hear absolutely no difference at all. They are well made cables, I still have them (but use speakons now), but they still make absolutely NO difference to the sound whatsoever. Why didn't my bad case of placebo kick in in that instance, and why do I continue to hear a difference with Monster Bass Cables when I hear no difference at all with the Monster Speaker Cables even though my expectations were equally high?

2) One of my audio engineer friends once convinced me that Mogami quad cables were sonically superior to everything else, so I went and bought a bunch and redid, painstakingly, my entire effects rack (about 16 short cables with two ends each). Four connections on each phone plug, PLUS shielding, it was a complete pain in the ***. Took many hours. Upon finishing it (it took me about a week all in all) I could hear absolutely NO difference between the Mogami and the standard Belden stereo shielded cable, even though I had just spent quite a bit of dough and a LOT of effort doing it. Why didn't my placebo effect kick in then? I still hear no difference with it. I still hear a difference with my Monster bass cable.

And I still hear a difference with the VD power cable.

Why would the placebo effect be so intermittent?

The answer is, it is NOT the placebo effect. There is an audible difference.

I've been around a long time, been dealing with audio and bass gear for a long time, and I am not a fool when it comes to this stuff. You are free to differ, but until you hear this actual cable, your opinions won't mean much.

Cheers,
Cameron

 

[Bob Lee (QSC)]

The answer is, it is NOT the placebo effect. There is an audible difference.

Those two statements have not been substantiated.

 

[Richard Lindsey]

Why would the placebo effect be so intermittent?

The answer is, it is NOT the placebo effect. There is an audible difference.

It doesn't matter at all whether the placebo effect is intermittent or consistent. The placebo effect does not need to be universal to be existent; it need only be possible (i.e., not excluded). What matters is whether, for a given test, you can rule it out entirely or not. A well-designed test excludes the possibility.

Especially since what you have here is what we might call an extraordinary claim that therefore demands extraordinary proof, the burden of proof is not on naysayers to prove that the placebo effect is ALWAYS distorting your results. It's enough to show that you haven't ensured that it couldn't be. All a naysayer would have to do to invalidate your results is to show that you could not rule out the possibility that the placebo effect was operating. That's how it works. The burden of proof is on you to show that NO placebo effect could possibly have been present. That's precisely the point of why blinded studies are done in the way they are.

Note that "invalidate your results" does not, in itself, invariably mean you're wrong. But it does mean your results cannot be trusted to be right, and when there's a lot of work and knowledge favoring the other side of the question, that pushes things toward the "wrong" side.

 

[tombowlus]

Come on Tom, you're going to need the write-offs anyway, man!

Hey, I'd be happy to try it, but I wanted to be realistic about my previous results with power cables.

That said, I trust your ears, and your comments have intrigued me.

 

[Akito]

Hey I dig that band, man. Awesome stuff!

 

[Bassflute]

Hey I dig that band, man. Awesome stuff!

get us some gigs in the states.

C.

 

[gregbackstrom]

till I plugged it in. I'm sorry, it works, a little bit. And I read the audio critic article, and agree with most of it; however...

the analogy to power cables not making a difference unless you go all the way back to the transformer in the power station does not hold up; it's like saying a water conditioner or filter won't work unless you go right back to the source. This is more like that, IMHO.

And I completely disagree with the digital vs analogue article, having never really liked 'digital' sound from the beginning, and also having heard the same recording on a high end cd player A/B'd with the same performance on vinyl played an Oracle turntable with a Koetsu moving-coil cartridge through a set of high-end B&W speakers and the same pre-amp/power amp combo - the turntable sounded VASTLY different and much better/ more natural, with immediate percussive impact that was sorely lacking in the cd performance inspite of it being a $6,000.00 cd player with a $4,000.00 DA converter. Sure there was crackling/hiss, etc. But there was a percussive attack that has been lacking in digital sound since it's inception. Could you measure the difference? I doubt it, not by any conventional means. Could you hear the difference? Irrefutably so. Digital has always sounded transparent to my ears, like the difference between videotape and film. Film still has a soft, natural look to it that can't be beat in certain applications (not to mention dynamic and tonal range, but that's a whole other story).

I have A/B'd this power cable with a regular one for about four hours, and what I find is:

1) The Power Three cable sounded 'darker' initially, but then I realized the scratchy, harsh treble response of the Eden amp had been smoothed out somewhat.

2) Slightly better dynamics - not a lot, but a bit

3) Better upper and low mid transients when played hard.

4) Top end a little 'sweeter', and with slightly less noise.

I'm sorry, but this thing works, a bit. Not a huge difference, maybe a couple of %, but I can clearly hear and feel a difference when I play. And I thought clearly this thing was going to be total ********. I was looking forward to completely ridiculing the company, its products, and anyone stupid enough to buy one, but you know, I just can't...

My test method - extremely unscientific: I played a groove for about a minute with one cable, had my girlfriend yank the plug out quickly and replace it with the high end one, so the amp was only off for a brief time (less than 3 seconds or so) and continued on with the groove. Did not touch a knob or even the on/off switch of the amp (not a good thing, I know). We did this back and forth several times. I hear a difference; I feel a difference. She heard a difference, and was able to describe it. Not profound, but it is definitely there. Maybe 3%.

Would I suggest everyone go out and buy a $300.00 power cable? - no. Will I be throwing this one in the garbage? - no.
Will I use this in the studio when I can plug directly into the wall? - yes.

I know all the standard caveats about placebo effects, etc. I have heard Bill Fitzmaurice rant on about scientific test results, etc. Is it measureable? I don't know - possibly not. Can you measure the difference between two identical Fender basses, same model, finish, strings, age, and everythings - probably not. As a bass player of 38 years, can I hear and feel a difference? Youbetcha.

I believe in science strongly, but I also know some things cannot be measured. Does a cheap violin put out the same frequencies as a multi-million dollar or priceless Strad/Guarneri/Amati? Probably pretty close. Do they sound different? Yes.

I operated the recording booths in both recital halls at Douglas College and at The University Of British Columbia school of music when I was a student back in the 80's (my part-time job), recording hundreds of professional and student concerts, and once got to record a breathtakingly beautiful Amati violin when the Purcell string quartet performed there (beautiful old British board whose name escapes me and a pair of AKG 414's in a gorgeous small concert hall). I can say it sounds PROFOUNDLY different. The second violinist had a gorgeous, high end violin, well over a hundred years old, and worth in excess of $50,000.00 at that time (mid 1980's). The first violinist had an Amati, estimated at that time in the mid-six digits ($300 - $500,000), probably several million today. Listening carefully through the Tannoy monitors, and through the AKG headphones, I can tell you that the Amati had an unearthly human-singing quality that the other violin did not have, and it was NOT just the player. One sounded like a very nice wooden box with strings on it, played extremely well. The Amati had this gorgeous, ethereal natural sound to it that you could not classify. No wood, no strings, just this gorgeous open, human-like vocal quality. Pure, sweet, buttery, lush, unreal. Could you measure the difference between the two? Maybe, but you'd have to do a LOT of samples, and measure extremely carefully, and I'm sure the differences would not be profound, but teeny and seemingly insignificant. Could you and I hear it, and every violinist in the audience hear it? Youbetcha. That's what costs the extra decimal place.

The same kind of thing with this power cable, believe it or not. I wanted to laugh, guffaw, blast the company out of the water with the stupidity of it, etc. But I can't. It sounds better than the other cable. A little bit.

Is it measureable? Who knows.

Tom Bowlus - if you like, pm me, I'll send it to you, try it with your IP's cabs, your Sadowski head, a bunch of basses, anything you like. Keep it for a month or two, but you HAVE to send it back. Give us your full, unbiased report. Blast it and me out of the water - call us idiots for believing in this trash. Give her.

I'll pay shipping to your place, do your review, but you HAVE to send it back, at your expense. What do you think?

I'm sorry, I wanted to say differently, but the Audio Dynamics Power three cable improves the sound of my bass system. Not a lot, but enough that I won't slagg them or their products. The $13,000.00 cable - ridiculous. The $300.00 one - it's a keeper for me. I'll keep it in my bag and use it whenever I can plug my amp directly into the wall because it sounds better, a little better, than a conventional cable, IMHO, as a musician and bass player.

The measurebators can get their slide rules out and tell me why I'm nuts now.

Sincerely,
Cameron

But will it add 10 dB of gain to an Eden 1205?

Greg Backstrom

 

[gregbackstrom]

To counter this argument, the examples that I have used in other threads are:

1) After hearing the difference my front end Monster bass cable made to my sound, I ran out and bought two Monster speaker cables to replace the home-made thick ones I assembled from the thickest lamp cord that would fit through the phone plugs I was using at the time. After spending a ton of dough on them and plugging them in, I could hear absolutely no difference at all. They are well made cables, I still have them (but use speakons now), but they still make absolutely NO difference to the sound whatsoever. Why didn't my bad case of placebo kick in in that instance, and why do I continue to hear a difference with Monster Bass Cables when I hear no difference at all with the Monster Speaker Cables even though my expectations were equally high?

2) One of my audio engineer friends once convinced me that Mogami quad cables were sonically superior to everything else, so I went and bought a bunch and redid, painstakingly, my entire effects rack (about 16 short cables with two ends each). Four connections on each phone plug, PLUS shielding, it was a complete pain in the ***. Took many hours. Upon finishing it (it took me about a week all in all) I could hear absolutely NO difference between the Mogami and the standard Belden stereo shielded cable, even though I had just spent quite a bit of dough and a LOT of effort doing it. Why didn't my placebo effect kick in then? I still hear no difference with it. I still hear a difference with my Monster bass cable.

And I still hear a difference with the VD power cable.

Why would the placebo effect be so intermittent?

The answer is, it is NOT the placebo effect. There is an audible difference.

I've been around a long time, been dealing with audio and bass gear for a long time, and I am not a fool when it comes to this stuff. You are free to differ, but until you hear this actual cable, your opinions won't mean much.

Cheers,
Cameron

Hi Cameron,

I hope I haven't gotten you confused with another bass player by the same name, but I think I remember you as a fellow dissatisfied Eden owner. I'm continually impressed with how much heat you can draw by trying to provide an honest assessment about YOUR OWN gear! There has to be a way to market this talent!

I became a cable believer in the 70's when Polk Audio introduced their "Cobra-Cable" speaker cables. Many--or it might have been all--of the audiophile community were outraged at these exotic $28 cables and decreed that they were utter garbage. I was living in Portland Oregon, next to a hospital, and was having trouble with dirty AC power creating weird "hash" sounds from my Dahlquist speakers. I swapped out my 12 gauge "zip" cables and with the Cobras, the sound became much more defined. I could now clearly hear some sort of switching happening, which I was able to record. I took the recording to Physician's & Surgeon's Hospital next door and an on-staff engineer was able to identify the sound as the Dialysis machine.

I'm not an engineer, so I can't tell you whether I was hearing great cable design or whether it was resistance, reactance, impedance, or capacitance (I'm pretty confident, though, that someone here is about to tell me what I heard--or didn't hear), but I can tell you that the imaging and stereo staging of my DQ-10A's improved while using these cables!

Feel free to send the cable my way---I'm curious! However, you should be warned that I like cables and I think they make a difference.

Hope it's cold where you are!
Greg Backstrom

PS I'm using an X2 wireless now. Damn thing sounds like a cable!

 

[ashbory]

Wow. I just checked out the web site for this company, they are selling a 5 ft power cable for over $13,000.

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

 

[jondog]

I became a cable believer in the 70's when Polk Audio introduced their "Cobra-Cable" speaker cables. Many--or it might have been all--of the audiophile community were outraged at these exotic $28 cables and decreed that they were utter garbage. I was living in Portland Oregon, next to a hospital, and was having trouble with dirty AC power creating weird "hash" sounds from my Dahlquist speakers. I swapped out my 12 gauge "zip" cables and with the Cobras, the sound became much more defined. I could now clearly hear some sort of switching happening, which I was able to record. I took the recording to Physician's & Surgeon's Hospital next door and an on-staff engineer was able to identify the sound as the Dialysis machine.

So you miced your speakers to make the recording?

 

[Richard Lindsey]

I can't help feeling that there is a grerat deal of confusion, especially among the most pro-cable crowd, about the nature of the disagreement here. Too many of the "cableites," if I may call them that, seem to think that those of us who believe that AC cables make no difference are therefore saying that all cables, in any application and with any signal, are the same and that there can never be any difference between any two cables anywhere. This is wrong. We know, for example, that capacitance can make a difference in instrument cables. We know this because it's been demonstrated in convincing fashion. But it does not follow from that that any other cable in a wildly different application doing a very different job will also have an effect that a person can hear in the relevant environment. It is perfectly possible and logical to believe that some instrument cables can make a difference but that AC cables do not. Give what's known about this stuff, and the apparent absence of any convincing testing to the contrary, that would seem to be not just a possible position but the most sensible one.

The fact that my Bill Lawrence instrument cable may sound different from my old coiled Radio Shack cable with the molded ends does not mean that changing AC cords does anything. In fact, it says nothing about AC cables at all and is no sort of confirming evidence. The way you determine whether AC cords make a difference is by testing that possibility in some reasonably rigorous fashion.

 

[MikeBass]

What kills me is when I came back to this thread, there was a banner ad at the top of the page for "JPS Labs- the worlds finest cable".

 

[Bryan316]

I wanna buy one of these cables and send them a video of me using their product.


For playing Dethklok.


That oughta piss em off.