Power cords improve audio performance!

[ceptimus]

I just made the mistake of purchasing an audio magazine.

Inside, there is a review of different audio power cords. These just take mains electricity from the socket on the wall the three feet or so to the connector on the back of the amplifier. The prices range from $120 to $220, with the most expensive cord coming out the winner:

...delivers a toe-tapping sound. Details abound, making vocals utterly convincing, while bass is solid. Connect it to [a video display] and colours become more natural, while detail levels sharpen up. I wonder how the audiophiles that believe this bs think the electricity travels for the many miles between the generators and their house wall socket? How do they believe that the super expensive cable that carries the power for the last three feet can make such an enormous difference?

[Grundar]

Same way they believe placing a chip on top of the CD-player improves the sound of the CD.:)

/Hans

[dogguy]

Most audio equipment would perform very poorly without them. :D

[richardm]

I wonder how the audiophiles that believe this bs think the electricity travels for the many miles between the generators and their house wall socket? How do they believe that the super expensive cable that carries the power for the last three feet can make such an enormous difference?
Look, it's easy. Look up at the cables travelling between the power station and your house. They are big and thick, right? This means that the electricity can travel through them very easily.

But when they get to your house, the electricity gets squeezed into tiny cables which causes turbulence in the power. Special cables can use quantum effects to funnel the electricity more smoothly, which gives you better sound. The same principle comes into play with loudspeaker cables, which is why bell wire is never going to be any good. Too thin, see?

It's all very straightforward if you just think about it.

Edited to add: Because it's a quantum effect, the more expensive the cable, the better this funneling works, obviously, because of the well known effects of quantum entanglement, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Superposition. Computer people have known about this latter effect for years, which is why network cables (which have to carry data very accurately over long distances) are called things like Cat 5.

[Dog Boots]

I've spent many hours the last few months discussing the same issues with hifi-freaks on hifi4all.dk (Danish site in danish). Many of them claim that there's no question that the powercords can influence the sound, but the discussion always comes to a halt, just like the theism/atheism debate, even though, in this particular discussion, the final conclusion should be easy.

All attempts at getting the people who claim they can hear a difference to actually prove it (in a blind test f.inst.) have been futile. Go figure. They "don't wanna" do it - "can't be bothered". "Go listen for your selves, and you will easily hear the difference", they tell us, and nobody has been able to provide any arguments, whatsoever, as to why they should not have been influenced by the, very real and widely acknowledged, placebo effect (I'm an audio engineer by profession, so believe me, I know the placebo effect! :))

Nor do the argument that NOBODY in the professional audio business (not including salespeople at hifi-stores) pays any attention to quality of powercords, seem to have much impact. Heck, they/we don't even pay attention to the audio quality of signal carrying cables - speaker cables, maybe, but line/microphone-level cables - not a chance....much less powercords.

Sigh.

[jon]

Most audio equipment would perform very poorly without them. :D

The chips that you can buy to put on your CD player work equally well without a power cable :D

[jimlintott]

Not just audio but they claim video improvement as well. I knew this was going to happen when I saw that most flat panels had seperate power cords.

[Vitnir]

I read once in a audiophile magazine that devouted audiophiles get car batteries to provide a more stable source of electricity, is that true?

[Crispy Duck]

Not sure if I've posted this before, but anyway, here's a write-up of a little experiment I did to test the claim that one of those power cords will improve the quality of the digital outputs of a CD transport:

http://www.oview.co.uk/badscience

It was prompted by one of Ben Goldacre's Bad Science columns in the Guardian - the relevant article is linked from the link above.

It occurred to me after thinking about this issue for a while that the audiophiles had misunderstood the idea of an aural placebo effect. When it is suggested to them that there isn't really any difference in sound quality, they react as if being accused of lying. It's very important for them to understand that we (sceptics) believe that they really do hear a difference - it's just that the difference is occurring within their heads, not in the real world.

[Just thinking]

I read once in a audiophile magazine that devouted audiophiles get car batteries to provide a more stable source of electricity, is that true?

Well, if your system is run entirely on DC I think you can eliminate any trace of AC hum.

[tsg]

Audiophiles, at least the few I've been exposed to, seem to me like wine afficianados: they all seem to try to one-up one another by showing off how sensitive their ears/pallette are. I had one try to tell me the same thing about some audio cables on my stereo. When I told him I couldn't hear a difference, with a barely disguised smirk, he suggested that perhaps my ears weren't sensitive enough and that I might be "perfectly satisfied" with consumer-grade (barely disguised disgust) cables.

What really annoyed him was that I absolutely failed to be offended by the remark.

[El Greco]

I've spent many hours the last few months discussing the same issues with hifi-freaks on hifi4all.dk (Danish site in danish). Many of them claim that there's no question that the powercords can influence the sound, but the discussion always comes to a halt, just like the theism/atheism debate, even though, in this particular discussion, the final conclusion should be easy.

All attempts at getting the people who claim they can hear a difference to actually prove it (in a blind test f.inst.) have been futile. Go figure. They "don't wanna" do it - "can't be bothered". "Go listen for your selves, and you will easily hear the difference", they tell us, and nobody has been able to provide any arguments, whatsoever, as to why they should not have been influenced by the, very real and widely acknowledged, placebo effect (I'm an audio engineer by profession, so believe me, I know the placebo effect! :))


Exactly the same's been happening in relevant Greek forums. Why someone wouldn't submit himself to a simple A/B/X test so that -if nothing else- he can stop spending money in rubbish, is beyond me.

[Apollyon]

Hey. I've got a great idea! Maybe they should start putting these new-fangled electronic components called regulators, isolators, and conditioners in audio equipment? Then power cord quality pretty much become a non-issue, unless you plan on using a pair of coathangers between the outlet and your new Tandy amp.

Man, I've got to get on this right away.

:D

[fuelair]

Maybe it's just because when these things are proved to be useless, they will lose their (perceived) exalted status. Just a guess!!(cough) (cough)darnright(cough).

[jimlintott]

For some interesting reading check out the Great Cable Debate (http://www.hifiwigwam.com/forum1/1614.html).

For those without patience here (http://www.auricles.com/Kiang_Power_cable_test%282%29.xls) are the results.

[roger]

For some interesting reading check out the Great Cable Debate (http://www.hifiwigwam.com/forum1/1614.html).

For those without patience here (http://www.auricles.com/Kiang_Power_cable_test%282%29.xls) are the results.I love reading their comments when the results come in. A guy who guessed right decides this means he can hear the difference, even if the statistical evidence shows no significance in the result (he had a 33% chance of guessing the right cable due to chance), another guy gets it wrong and concludes that there must either be something wrong with the AB test or that he is deaf, etc. Of course there are level headed posts there, too.

[Mr. Skinny]

I think power chords can greatly enhance and audio performance. Take, for instance, the Kinks "You Really Got Me". That G5 - F5 riff really grabs the listener at the begining of the song. :cool:

[Beausoleil]

I think power chords can greatly enhance and audio performance. Take, for instance, the Kinks "You Really Got Me". That G5 - F5 riff really grabs the listener at the begining of the song. :cool:

I wonder if there's money to be made selling vacuum pumps to hi-fi buffs. I'm sure removing the air from the CD drive would make for a cleaner laser signal. Well, I'm sure they could be convinced of it if the pump was expensive enough.

[Ducky]

I love the guys (and I can't find the link now) that were advocating liquid mercury speaker cables.

Hoo boy.

[ZirconBlue]

I think power chords can greatly enhance and audio performance. Take, for instance, the Kinks "You Really Got Me". That G5 - F5 riff really grabs the listener at the begining of the song. :cool:


Darn! I was hoping to make the Power Chord joke!

[Mr. Skinny]

Darn! I was hoping to make the Power Chord joke!
To be honest, Zircon, I was suprised I got to make it first. :D

I just figured that if it seemed obvious to me, probably 25 other members were already thinking it.

[Mr. Skinny]

I love the guys (and I can't find the link now) that were advocating liquid mercury speaker cables.

Hoo boy.
Highly recommended for homes with pets and small children and other life forms, I'd imagine.

Dang. I'd like to see that link if you find it Fowl.

[joe87]

I don't see how a 3-foot power cord could mess up your line voltage, but just any old AC is not necessarily acceptable. If you run your electronic equipment with an emergency generator, you need to make sure the AC produced by the generator is a nice, clean sine wave. Square waves and saw-tooth waves are not good. You need AC with low harmonic distortion. This is something I'm concerned about because I can run my electronic furnace controller and my computer with my emergency generator if the power goes out, and I'm not sure just what the generator puts out. Fortunately, I have backup woodstove heat, so I haven't had to put the generator to the test during winter power outages, but it's nice to be able to check out the weather on the internet during power outages.

From the northern tool catalog (http://www.northerntool.com/catalog/buyersguides/generators/), they say their generators have low THD.
Total Harmonic Distortion (THD)
Total Harmonic Distortion is a means to measure the quality of electricity. 6% THD is considered the upper limit for "clean" electricity. Above 6% THD the electricity may reduce the life of electrical circuits, cause microprocessors to malfunction and cause furnace controllers to operate incorrectly. All NorthStar generators have THD less than 6%. Some generators produce THD greater than 15%.
Possibly if a cheap power cord introduces harmonic distortion, it could affect the quality of the sound an amplifier puts out. On the other hand, if you can't hear the difference, why worry about it.

[kellyb]

Wow. I work in "live" sound, and we just don't have those kinds of debates in that world.
Probably because we make/service/repair our own cables?

Are these actual engineers that are spreading these weird rumors? Or are they just...people who listen to music or people with Protools on their computer who think they know about sound?
Who are these people?

[CaveDave]

Ok, here goes.:D

I have laughed with the rest of you about the supersaturated WOO that permeates the audiophile world, but there are a few grains of truth hidden inside the sandstorm of misinformation that passes as the current received wisdom in the Audio field.

It all boils down to:

1) E=IR
and
2) P=I^2R

To explain:
E==Voltage in Volts, In this case, voltage drop or loss.
I==Current in Amperes, in this case, the current demanded at the PEAK signal that is instantaneously flowing in the circuit or conductor being considered.
R==The resistance in Ohms of a circuit or segment of conductor, including any thermal or nonlinear effects, at the instant being studied.
P==Power in Watts, in this case, this is lost power.

In a simple case, If there is 120 Volts supplied to your service entry, and the loop resistance is 2 Ohms (1 Ohm out, 1 Ohm return) with a peak draw of 10 Amperes, then there would only be 100 volts at the load due to the 1 Volt lost on each leg of the circuit. And 200 Watts are lost in the loop as heat (wasted).
Now this includes all the small contributions from entry-to-breaker, breaker internal, breaker-to-wiring, wiring-to-outlet, outlet-to-plug, plug-to-cord, cord-to-cap, cap-to-inlet, inlet-to-power supply, and back through to the several connections to the entry, not counting the resistances of each piece of wire in the loop.

Cheap (like come with most equipment) attachment cords are often slim-guage and low conductivity wires with thick insulation and jacketing (To make them LOOK hefty while they are simply cheap).

Can GOOD quality cords help supply better regulated voltage to the equipment? YES.

Do they make up for poor building wiring and devices? NO.

In the case of decent wiring to the outlet, then you may benefit *some* from a better-than-cheap cord, but the entire loop must be good to get the full performance of the equipment.

If your cord or attachments get warm, you are losing power and regulation stiffness.

HTH

Cheers,
Dave

ETA: I meant to expand further, but it is late and I am too lazy to do it now.

[a_unique_person]

I just made the mistake of purchasing an audio magazine.

Inside, there is a review of different audio power cords. These just take mains electricity from the socket on the wall the three feet or so to the connector on the back of the amplifier. The prices range from $120 to $220, with the most expensive cord coming out the winner:

I wonder how the audiophiles that believe this bs think the electricity travels for the many miles between the generators and their house wall socket? How do they believe that the super expensive cable that carries the power for the last three feet can make such an enormous difference?

It makes my toes tap! Is there some sort of electric shock emanating from this device?

[Ducky]

Highly recommended for homes with pets and small children and other life forms, I'd imagine.

Dang. I'd like to see that link if you find it Fowl.


I'm still searching for it. in the meantime enjoy this craptastic wiki article:

http://www.wikifaq.com/Audio_Speaker_Cable_and_Wire_FAQ


ETA:

FOUND IT!

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/sci.physics/browse_frm/thread/5a3dc71d1e12759/0d3e2eff5ce81a4f?lnk=st&q=mercury+speaker+cable+group:*.audio.*&rnum=3&hl=en#0d3e2eff5ce81a4f

Whew. came from this thread started by JJ a while ago:

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1155995#post1155995

ETA:

You gotta love this quote:

Mercury filled cables suffer from signal-induced magnetostrictive non-linear
microphonics. The resistive impedance has a temporally varying component
with a first derivative w.r.t. time proportional to the second power
of the signal current. This causes multiplicative mixing of the signal
with a signal with all frequencies doubled, causing objective (as
opposed to subjective) sum and difference frequencies. At mechanical
resonance, the electrical signal may cause runaway oscillation resulting
in cavitation, yeilding chaotic resistance phenomena. Near resonance,
high-Q mechanical vibration will cause what laymen call "ringing",
continued oscillation after the driving signal is removed.

Wow. That's some grade-A bulls***.

[Wudang]

Reminds me of the New Scientist article about the hifi show where the columnist noted people selling speaker cable for £n,000 per meter. One high-end amp (I think) seller had a problem with his speaker cables so popped out to a nearby hardware store and bought a few metres of their own brand power cable in its distinctive bright orange and paid for with small change. Made excellent speaker cable apparently.

[FireGarden]

eric johnson, the man who can identify which type of battery is in his guitar pedals[ (http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/interviews/eric_johnson_born_to_play_guitar_part_1.html)

(OK, it's from the comments section rather than the interview. But I remember reading an interview with him years ago where he made the claim.)

Again, not an interview but a reference to an interview:
Eric Johnson Profile (http://www.nipp.com/artists/detail/eric-johnson)

In an interview for Guitar Player magazine, he had confirmed he prefers Duracell-brand batteries to power his effects pedals, because they give him better tone. He has also mentioned that, by cleaning his signal path, he has managed to remove the grit from his sound. This actually does make sense and is similar to what many audiophiles do, by using power conditioners and even purchasing battery-powered amplifiers.

It's certainly a wide spread rumour:

Cool Guitar Music (http://www.universal-total-guitar-plus-center.com/guitar-music.html)

Did U Know? It's said that he can tell you the type of battery used in a pedal just by listening to it - the sound not the battery ;-).

(Smilie inc in original!)


ETA,
In his defence I should say that I have his "Ah Via Musicom" album, and Duracell sound good! (Assuming that's what he used!)

[MRC_Hans]

I've spent many hours the last few months discussing the same issues with hifi-freaks on hifi4all.dk (Danish site in danish).

Endnu en dansker. Hej! ... Jeg må hellere kigge lidt på den side ;).

Mvh Hans

[FireGarden]

There's also Duane Allman and nearly flat batteries

Duane Allman (http://hotguitarist.com/music_artists/duane_allman.htm)

In order to thicken out the sound a little, he used a Fuzz Face distortion box, which he insisted to be used in conjunction with nearly flat 9V batteries. His justification for this was that the sound takes on a slightly creamier quality when the batteries are flat, while the amp can then be used to provide the main raunch and overdrive.

OK,
electronic devices in general working differently as the batteries go flat -- that's reasonable. Maybe different brands have slightly different output? And that could explain Eric Johnson's views?

Mmmm.
Still not convinced.

[Mojo]

There's also Duane Allman and nearly flat batteries

OK,
electronic devices in general working differently as the batteries go flat -- that's reasonable. Especially since what Allman will have been looking for is distortion.

[Dog Boots]

Cheap (like come with most equipment) attachment cords are often slim-guage and low conductivity wires with thick insulation and jacketing (To make them LOOK hefty while they are simply cheap).

Can GOOD quality cords help supply better regulated voltage to the equipment? YES.

Do they make up for poor building wiring and devices? NO.

In the case of decent wiring to the outlet, then you may benefit *some* from a better-than-cheap cord, but the entire loop must be good to get the full performance of the equipment.

If your cord or attachments get warm, you are losing power and regulation stiffness.

HTH

Cheers,
Dave

ETA: I meant to expand further, but it is late and I am too lazy to do it now.

I agree with the above - but it's only a matter of wire gauges and such. Cables hand spun by virgins on the backs of unicorns are still BS.

[CaveDave]

I agree with the above - but it's only a matter of wire gauges and such. Cables hand spun by virgins on the backs of unicorns are still BS.
Absolutely!
My point was that the power system is a system and can't be tested in isolation from the internal connections and quality of the internal parts (Welds, contacts, etc.).

Cheers,
Dave

[articulett]

Same way they believe placing a chip on top of the CD-player improves the sound of the CD.:)

/Hans

It doesn't?

Well snails sliming across your face still reduce wrinkles don't they? Or has that one been debunked too? I haven't been getting my "what has been debunked" memo--can someone fix this?

[articulett]

I agree with the above - but it's only a matter of wire gauges and such. Cables hand spun by virgins on the backs of unicorns are still BS.

Not really--not until consumed and digested by a male ruminant, I think. But it smells the same--maybe worse.

[stormer]

Ok, here goes.:D

I have laughed with the rest of you about the supersaturated WOO that permeates the audiophile world, but there are a few grains of truth hidden inside the sandstorm of misinformation that passes as the current received wisdom in the Audio field.

It all boils down to:

1) E=IR
and
2) P=I^2R

--snip--

In a simple case, If there is 120 Volts supplied to your service entry, and the loop resistance is 2 Ohms (1 Ohm out, 1 Ohm return) with a peak draw of 10 Amperes, then there would only be 100 volts at the load due to the 1 Volt lost on each leg of the circuit. And 200 Watts are lost in the loop as heat (wasted).

--snip--


I actually agree with you on the calculations, Dave. I just don't agree with the value you choose.

A current draw of 10A needs a cross sectional area of about 1 mm square. If the wire is not the minimum size for the current, the wire will melt, so we can assume the conductor is to spec.

Next, the 2 ohm loop. The resistivity of copper is low that the entire loop has to be about 120m in length. That's a power cord that is 60 m in length.

I think it would have been more fair to use perhaps, 0.034 ohm for a power cord of 1 m length, thus giving 3.4 W power loss in the power cord. (Although if the power cord was really 2 ohm at 60 m long, your calculations would be valid)

[CaveDave]

I actually agree with you on the calculations, Dave. I just don't agree with the value you choose.

A current draw of 10A needs a cross sectional area of about 1 mm square. If the wire is not the minimum size for the current, the wire will melt, so we can assume the conductor is to spec.

Next, the 2 ohm loop. The resistivity of copper is low that the entire loop has to be about 120m in length. That's a power cord that is 60 m in length.

I think it would have been more fair to use perhaps, 0.034 ohm for a power cord of 1 m length, thus giving 3.4 W power loss in the power cord. (Although if the power cord was really 2 ohm at 60 m long, your calculations would be valid)
I was counting the entire loop from the service entry (the utility meter) to the load, including all connectors and wiring devices and the building wire. :) But I did just pull a number (1 ohm each way) out of my @$$ for ease of cacculation, to show how important small losses can be. :D

I have seen cheapo extension cords where not only was the wire the minimum size to carry the rated load, but the alloy was low grade and the contacts were cheap and poorly bonded to the wire. Near maximum load the ends would get quite warm. :eek:

Cheers,
Dave

ETA: I also intended (but got lazy) to illustrate the fact that as the load changes with the music, the losses change and the voltage at the load will vary, possibly affecting the sound quality.

[stormer]

I was counting the entire loop from the service entry (the utility meter) to the load, including all connectors and wiring devices and the building wire. :) But I did just pull a number (1 ohm each way) out of my @$$ for ease of cacculation, to show how important small losses can be. :D

--snip--

ETA: I also intended (but got lazy) to illustrate the fact that as the load changes with the music, the losses change and the voltage at the load will vary, possibly affecting the sound quality.

Once again, I agree with you on the whole, Dave.

The entire loop from the watt-hour meter through the wall wiring through the power socket through the power cord into the transformer in the equipment and back again may easily be more than 2 ohms. But we are talking about "magic power cords" here though, and how much these cords will affect the audio.

I agree that if you use less than minimum spec wiring, going to proper spec will help. Nothing much you can do about the entire electrical loop, so let's look at only the power cord.

How much effect does a properly specced and constructed power cord affect the audio as compared with them "magic power cords"?


And for your "ETA", equipment is run from a d/c supply internally with the support of large value capacitors to provide a stable voltage. A properly designed regulated power supply will provide a stable d/c that should not be affected by the load. Even if they were not properly designed psus, how will the "magic power cord" affect the d/c voltage?

[todd]

isn't it possible that there is a measureable mechanincal/electronic difference in current that doesn't amount to a measurable audible difference?

[stormer]

isn't it possible that there is a measureable mechanincal/electronic difference in current that doesn't amount to a measurable audible difference?

A properly designed piece of equipment, an amplifier for example, would not be affected by variations in the a/c supply. I'd agree with your post because that is the way the equipment should be working. Yes, a measurable fluctuation in the input current (actually the current should always fluctuate, the voltage should not) may not cause any change in the audio.

Now, if there is a difference in audio, it can be measured, and I dare say better than a person can hear it.

If the difference in the audio is not audible, why chase it? Oh wait, audiophiles can hear it....

I think all "audio magic" products are pure BS.

[CaveDave]

The entire loop from the watt-hour meter through the wall wiring through the power socket through the power cord into the transformer in the equipment and back again may easily be more than 2 ohms. But we are talking about "magic power cords" here though, and how much these cords will affect the audio.
I agree! I guess I was unclear in my previous posts that the average audiophile, in a residential structure, without specially installed high-spec circuits for their audio room, are already hamstrung so badly that solid oxygen-free copper silver-plated 10mm square bus bars from the amplifier to the wall receptical coulld not improve the sound.:D

I agree that if you use less than minimum spec wiring, going to proper spec will help. Nothing much you can do about the entire electrical loop, so let's look at only the power cord.
Well, unless the cord you are using is effectively just tinsel wire, bad supply to the wall outlet will dominate.

How much effect does a properly specced and constructed power cord affect the audio as compared with them "magic power cords"?
Not At All.:D

And for your "ETA", equipment is run from a d/c supply internally with the support of large value capacitors to provide a stable voltage. A properly designed regulated power supply will provide a stable d/c that should not be affected by the load. Even if they were not properly designed psus, how will the "magic power cord" affect the d/c voltage?
There are two kinds of regulation specified for proper power supplies: line and load. Load regulation is the change in output voltage with changes in load current, which includes transients. Line regulation is the change in output voltage under load with changes in input voltage. If the changes in load current (caused by music dynamics) reflected back to the input cause the input voltage to change (due to drop in the line wiring), it can show up as an output voltage change that then could affect the sound. If the cord is REALLY bad, then a new (but only reasonable quality) cord could help. No need to spend more than $10.00 or so.:)

Cheers,
Dave

[ChaoticLimbs]

I also am an audio professional. The only times I've seen ANY cable make a difference in sound quality is if, say, a mic cable is wired single ended and has poor shielding, or a speaker wire is too thin and drops voltage at high drive level.
That, and some just have nicer connectors on them and are more supple and fail less.
But any sufficiently conductive (heavy guage) speaker cable is fine.
Long runs of low level signals should be dual-ended (balanced audio) and properly shielded with a continuous shield.
Professional audio is WOO FREE.
Only the uneducated slobs believe in this brilliant pebble kind of BS. Of course, they don't even know what causes hum, distortion, etc, so they have to pretend to be audio afficionados with fancy do nothing gadgets.
Good speakers and a decent amp DO make a difference. Having 10dB more power available than what you intend to really use (having headroom) makes a pretty noticable difference because both music and voice program material has a load of dynamic range, so if the sound aaaah takes 10 watts to reproduce at a comfortable level, use a 100 watt amp for that room and music won't distort. Of course, even 10 watts of voice is good enough for a pretty big room....

[Aardvark]

These topics are debated long and hard on Hi Fi forums.

http://forum.hifichoice.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=15486&sid=474044a9416dc1619f9c97bb36858e07

This excellent thread was started by the resident sceptic at Hi Fi Choice and is terrific and entertaining

also read the following glossary of nonsense

http://forum.hifichoice.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=20002

And finally the great cable debate on Hi Fi Wigwam with results of a genuine double blind listening test conducted by members

http://www.hifiwigwam.com/forum1/1614-12.html

The bottom line of which was that the golden ears of the testers could not reliably detect the difference between a £2 kettle lead and a £100 audiophool lead.

If you want a better sound, buy better hi fi that sounds better to your ears when you listen to your favourite music in your own home. If you have money to burn, sell me the kit you no longer want at second hand values and then go out and spend the national debt of a small banana republic on your next set of boxes

[gumboot]

The best power cables for good sound are definately 3 phase 128 amp... :p carrying em around sure is a pain though...

-Andrew

[ChrisC]

Hi,
Re: Batteries in stomp boxes, specifically Fuzz Faces.
I can testify that near-dead batteries in the 60's models (germainium transistors vs later silicon, and almost certainly what D.A. would have used) make them sound different in measureable ways. I don't know about the other models, since I've never played with them much, but I've built a few of the Ge ones and they're finicky. Ambient temperature, battery voltage, variations in the bias... they all make them sound a little (or a lot) different, not to mention the less-than-stellar consistency between old Ge transistors.

Side note about the Si vs Ge transistors issue (if anyone likes old fuzz boxes). I found that if I dropped 2N3906's into a stock Ge circuit, they sounded horrid, but if one actually took the time to tweak the bias (about 1/2 supply voltage depending on the sound you like), they sounded similar to Ge, to the point that I'm not totally sure I'd consistantly hear a difference. I'd bet strongly against in a performance setting.

For the record, I'm a drummer, not a guitar player or Electronics Engineer. ***insert appropriate drummer joke here*** :)

Anyway, sorry about the minor derail. Back to lurk mode...

[Bigt]

I wonder if there's money to be made selling vacuum pumps to hi-fi buffs

Well - not for use in cd players, but there have been (are?) turntables and tonearms that require the use of a vacuum pump. In some straight-tracking tonearms, the idea was to float the arm on air and thus reduce friction; in turntables, a vacuum is used to pull down and flatten the record, definitely a worthy goal as so many records have at leats a little warpage, and too many, a lot. I had such a tonearm once, which worked very well, and it once was my ambition to own a Versa turntable. The Versa turntables used a vacuum pump to float its tonearm and for record clamping. Price for the cheap model was over $7,000; the expensive one, $12,000. Never got close to being able to afford one. Now that I no longer own a phono system, I no longer care.

[bjb]

Well, I'm a guitar player *and* and an electrical engineer, and I can also hear the difference in battery types in certiain distortion circuits. The rumor I heard was that it was the cell chemistry (carbon-zinc vs. alkaline) that cause the difference in sound, not the brand of battery. The story was that carbon-zinc batteries (which were used in the 60's) sounded darker because they put out less voltage.

I didn't think there could be an audible difference so I went to the 99 cent store and bought a few packages of both 9V battery types. I tried them in my Tubescreamer and I was surprised that there was a real difference; the alkaline battery sounded brighter than the carbon-zinc. Next, I made some voltage vs. current measurements and found that the carbon-zinc battery actually had *more* voltage than the alkaline battery, not less. However, the voltage vs. current plot showed that the carbon-zinc battery had more voltage loss as more current was drawn. This means that the carbon-zinc battery has a higher internal impedance than the alkaline cell.

Battery internal impedance is important in a distortion circuit because it determines how stable the 9V supply will be. An ideal battery has zero internal impedace so any stray signals that try to get onto the 9V bus will be shorted to ground. If the impedance is higher, signals created in one stage of the disortion circuit can get onto the 9V bus and interact with the other stages. A signal on the 9V bus will look like a change in supply voltage to the other stages in the circuit, so an additional signal path is created within the circuit. When this kind of interaction exists, high frequencies are the first to be diminished because the 'filtering' is worse at high frequencies than at low. Anyway, my guess is that the carbon-zinc 9V batteries have less filtering ability than alkaline batteries, so signals are more free to interact within the circuit and kill highs.

I know many people will think this is all b.s., but I've found that guitar electronics are very different from the kinds of electronics that most people use. Guitarists actually want distortion to occur, and when distortion occurs, strange things happen in the circuit. Most electrical engineers don't think too much about what happens when their circuits distort because they don't allow their circuits to distort in the first place. In this respect and others, guitar electronics is its own field of study so it is common for a good hi-fi engineer to come along and tell the guitar players that everything we are doing is wrong!

Another example of this is the effect of guitar cable on sound. Hi-fi and studio electronics are designed to have a low output impedance and a relatively high input impedance. This allows long cable runs to be used without significant signal loss, so using better or worse cables isn't going to cause an audible difference. But some guitar players have noticed that some guitar cables sound different than others, and this is in conflict with what hi-fi and studio engineers believe. It turns out that guitar pickups actually have a very high output impedance. Their internal impedance is mostly inductive, on the order of 2 to 7 Henrys (not millihenries). On the cable side, the cable lengths are much longer than in a hi-fi system, at 20 feet or more. With that much cable, the cable capacitance is large (700pF or so) and this creates a resonant circuit with the guitar pickup inductance. I know that some hi-fi nuts talk about speaker cable resonance as if it made a difference (it doesn't), but in the guitar world, the resonance exists (around 3-4kHz is common). The resonance puts a peak in the guitar pickup frequency response and it *is* audible. I've experimented with adding other small capacitances to the pickup and moving the resonant peak around to create different effects.

Since guitar cable capacitance has a direct effect on the sound of the guitar, it should not be surprising that guitar players will say they can differences in guitar cable. Some cables have more capacitance than others, and some people use short cables that have much less capacitance than is typical. Recently, I was at a studio doing some direct recording and the studio engineer handed me a very short cable he had made. I tried it out with a Stratocaster and heard some harsh noises coming out of the studio monitors. So I tried one of my 20' long cables and the extra capacitance took the edge off the guitar sound. The studio engineer was very impressed and didn't seem at all disappointed that his special short cable sounded bad.

Getting back to Eric Johnson, he's a frustrating guy because he believes *everything* changes the sound of his guitar. In certain cases, some of the weird things he believes are actually true but many other times, he is wrong. One story is that he had his guitar technician remove the steel screws from his guitar speaker cabinet and replace them with brass screws, hoping for an improvement in sound. Another is that he removed the screw from the bottom of his Fuzz-Face and used rubber bands to hold the cover in place. He says removing the screw made it sound better! Personally, I think Eric Johnson is more likely to be wrong than right, but he's right often enough that I investigate his opinions for myself and make my own decisions based on the facts I discover.

[bjb]

isn't it possible that there is a measureable mechanincal/electronic difference in current that doesn't amount to a measurable audible difference?

Yes, I've been able to measure signal losses that are not audible. For example, I repaired an old Ibanez analog delay pedal, and while it sounded great, I was measuring a 13% loss of signal at the input of the device. I thought something was wrong, so I built a copy of the input circuit and found there was always a measurable signal loss. 13% sounds like a large loss, but it works out to only 1.2dB. Most engineers start to worry when the losses get past 3dB, so this circuit was fine as it was.

[ChrisC]

bjb,

Interesting points about the carbon-zinc vs alkaline batteries. I've heard from others that they sound different in at least some boxes but I've never actually tried it myself because it sounded like bs. I'll go find some alkalines tonight and experiment a little. Being a cheapskate, I already have plenty of carbon-zinc 9v batteries around.
Poor neighbors...

weedillyweedillyweeeeee! :)

[Wally]

For the record, I'm a drummer, not a guitar player or Electronics Engineer. ***insert appropriate drummer joke here*** :)



How smart do you have to be to be a drummer? I mean all you have to do is count to 4 then start over.:D

[CaveDave]

Well, I'm a guitar player *and* and an electrical engineer, and I can also hear the difference in battery types in certiain distortion circuits. The rumor I heard was that it was the cell chemistry (carbon-zinc vs. alkaline) that cause the difference in sound, not the brand of battery. The story was that carbon-zinc batteries (which were used in the 60's) sounded darker because they put out less voltage.

I didn't think there could be an audible difference so I went to the 99 cent store and bought a few packages of both 9V battery types. I tried them in my Tubescreamer and I was surprised that there was a real difference; the alkaline battery sounded brighter than the carbon-zinc. Next, I made some voltage vs. current measurements and found that the carbon-zinc battery actually had *more* voltage than the alkaline battery, not less. However, the voltage vs. current plot showed that the carbon-zinc battery had more voltage loss as more current was drawn. This means that the carbon-zinc battery has a higher internal impedance than the alkaline cell.

Battery internal impedance is important in a distortion circuit because it determines how stable the 9V supply will be. An ideal battery has zero internal impedace so any stray signals that try to get onto the 9V bus will be shorted to ground. If the impedance is higher, signals created in one stage of the disortion circuit can get onto the 9V bus and interact with the other stages. A signal on the 9V bus will look like a change in supply voltage to the other stages in the circuit, so an additional signal path is created within the circuit. When this kind of interaction exists, high frequencies are the first to be diminished because the 'filtering' is worse at high frequencies than at low. Anyway, my guess is that the carbon-zinc 9V batteries have less filtering ability than alkaline batteries, so signals are more free to interact within the circuit and kill highs.

I know many people will think this is all b.s., but I've found that guitar electronics are very different from the kinds of electronics that most people use. Guitarists actually want distortion to occur, and when distortion occurs, strange things happen in the circuit. Most electrical engineers don't think too much about what happens when their circuits distort because they don't allow their circuits to distort in the first place. In this respect and others, guitar electronics is its own field of study so it is common for a good hi-fi engineer to come along and tell the guitar players that everything we are doing is wrong!

Another example of this is the effect of guitar cable on sound. Hi-fi and studio electronics are designed to have a low output impedance and a relatively high input impedance. This allows long cable runs to be used without significant signal loss, so using better or worse cables isn't going to cause an audible difference. But some guitar players have noticed that some guitar cables sound different than others, and this is in conflict with what hi-fi and studio engineers believe. It turns out that guitar pickups actually have a very high output impedance. Their internal impedance is mostly inductive, on the order of 2 to 7 Henrys (not millihenries). On the cable side, the cable lengths are much longer than in a hi-fi system, at 20 feet or more. With that much cable, the cable capacitance is large (700pF or so) and this creates a resonant circuit with the guitar pickup inductance. I know that some hi-fi nuts talk about speaker cable resonance as if it made a difference (it doesn't), but in the guitar world, the resonance exists (around 3-4kHz is common). The resonance puts a peak in the guitar pickup frequency response and it *is* audible. I've experimented with adding other small capacitances to the pickup and moving the resonant peak around to create different effects.

Since guitar cable capacitance has a direct effect on the sound of the guitar, it should not be surprising that guitar players will say they can differences in guitar cable. Some cables have more capacitance than others, and some people use short cables that have much less capacitance than is typical. Recently, I was at a studio doing some direct recording and the studio engineer handed me a very short cable he had made. I tried it out with a Stratocaster and heard some harsh noises coming out of the studio monitors. So I tried one of my 20' long cables and the extra capacitance took the edge off the guitar sound. The studio engineer was very impressed and didn't seem at all disappointed that his special short cable sounded bad.

Getting back to Eric Johnson, he's a frustrating guy because he believes *everything* changes the sound of his guitar. In certain cases, some of the weird things he believes are actually true but many other times, he is wrong. One story is that he had his guitar technician remove the steel screws from his guitar speaker cabinet and replace them with brass screws, hoping for an improvement in sound. Another is that he removed the screw from the bottom of his Fuzz-Face and used rubber bands to hold the cover in place. He says removing the screw made it sound better! Personally, I think Eric Johnson is more likely to be wrong than right, but he's right often enough that I investigate his opinions for myself and make my own decisions based on the facts I discover.
Great, informative post, BJB.:clap:

Sounds like you do the due diligence [sp?] that more people should do!

I especially liked the point about interaction on the Vcc bus and the point on impedance, resonance, and cable type.

Cheers,
Dave

[Meffy]

electronic devices in general working differently as the batteries go flat -- that's reasonable.
In the case of a distortion unit, it makes perfect sense. When the battery dies, you get clipping. In a radio this sounds really nasty. But when the idea is to distort the input, you get a trashiness that in some musical settings is just right.

I use software instruments, effects, and gear almost exclusively these days, so I just adjust a waveshaper or tweak a foldback, as desired, with no worries about supply voltages. :-} Ahhh, such luxury -- for so little money compared to hardware!

[FireGarden]

The story was that carbon-zinc batteries (which were used in the 60's) sounded darker because they put out less voltage.

[...] Next, I made some voltage vs. current measurements and found that the carbon-zinc battery actually had *more* voltage than the alkaline battery, not less.

I suppose I could get round to testing that much myself. I don't have any effects pedals. I'm mostly an acoustic player. When I do use effects, it's from an all in one processor which has tailor-made power supply.



But as I remember it, Eric Johnson favoured a particular brand rather than a particular type. I don't have an actual quote of him, however. All I can find are rumours regarding what he said ('he favours Duracell'). But maybe he prefers a particular type.

Getting back to Eric Johnson, he's a frustrating guy because he believes *everything* changes the sound of his guitar.

Somedays I sound better than others. I take that as I phrased it, ie: the difference is down to me being inconsistent. But maybe it is the cable!

Anyway, I'm not a perfectionist the way Eric Johnson is. That probably takes a lot of pressure off me, and explains why I settle for one effects processor rather than a whole bank of boxes!

I can testify that near-dead batteries in the 60's models (germainium transistors vs later silicon, and almost certainly what D.A. would have used) make them sound different in measureable ways.

The flat batteries thing I can believe. Bjb's "internal impedance" argument for battery types is out of my league to assess without an experiment.

I'll go find some alkalines tonight and experiment a little.

Would you mind trying the experiment by having someone else install batteries at random, so that we have a more objective answer to whether you really can tell the difference?

Anyway, sorry about the minor derail. Back to lurk mode...

No, no.
Now we have to switch to talking about getting that elusive Hank Marvin sound! To power the amp you need a lemon, a copper coin and a steel fork!

[ChrisC]

pfft! Lemon shlemon. Limes make your amp warmer and AT LEAST one louder...

I've been very busy (read: I forgot), but I'll definitely try the battery test tomorrow. How about I have someone connect both types in a box with an unlabeled switch so that I can switch them by myself without a long pause?
From careful study of top-notch audiophile research, I know the switch will add all kinds of quantam negative-energy fields and cosmic oogey boogey resonances, but I'm pretty sure I can hear through it.

If anyone is interested in advising on a serious DBT method, I'd be into trying it for fun with other musicians I know. It was harder than I thought to come up with a good one.

Results to follow.

[DRBUZZ0]

It's hard for me to believe that anyone even falls for this. It's gotten bad. At Tweeter (can I use the name of an acutal company?) they carry high-quality aftermarket power cords, which is sad, because that place is usually pretty good and non-BS.

If you have very bad power. (if it's off frequency, undervolted, full of interferance, varies in voltage), then that could definately mess with components. In that case, an active conditioner might help. But give me a break! The power cord is somehow a weak link (forgetting about all the other crap wiring the power has to travel through).

I got news for these folks. This is 120volt 60hz current. (or 220/50 outside the US/Canada/South America/Japan). 60Hz is relatively...er...low as far as frequency goes. We ain't talking about microwaves here. It's not like you're going to have to go into the RF properties of capacitive and inductive reactance. Jesus...if you're than concerned, you could run your power through an LMR cable all the way out to the pole (to the old ferrite circa-1960 transformer which is past due to be replaced).

'sides. Most of this stuff runs on DC anyway, so it's just gona take your current, downvolt it and then rectify it. If the equipment is decent, it oughta filter out any minor problems.

Selling overprices highquality interlinks...that's one thing. At least there's *some* logic to it. But this. God!

[CaveDave]

From careful study of top-notch audiophile research, I know the switch will add all kinds of quantam negative-energy fields and cosmic oogey boogey resonances, but I'm pretty sure I can hear through it.

Magic happens. (http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/a/AStoryAboutMagic.html)

A Story About `Magic'
Some years ago, I (GLS) was snooping around in the cabinets that housed the MIT AI Lab's PDP-10, and noticed a little switch glued to the frame of one cabinet. It was obviously a homebrew job, added by one of the lab's hardware hackers (no one knows who).

You don't touch an unknown switch on a computer without knowing what it does, because you might crash the computer. The switch was labeled in a most unhelpful way. It had two positions, and scrawled in pencil on the metal switch body were the words `magic' and `more magic'. The switch was in the `more magic' position.

I called another hacker over to look at it. He had never seen the switch before either. Closer examination revealed that the switch had only one wire running to it! The other end of the wire did disappear into the maze of wires inside the computer, but it's a basic fact of electricity that a switch can't do anything unless there are two wires connected to it. This switch had a wire connected on one side and no wire on its other side.

It was clear that this switch was someone's idea of a silly joke. Convinced by our reasoning that the switch was inoperative, we flipped it. The computer instantly crashed.

Imagine our utter astonishment. We wrote it off as coincidence, but nevertheless restored the switch to the `more magic' position before reviving the computer.



Cheers,
Dave

[bjb]

ChrisC, when I was testing 9V batteries in my TS-10 Tubescreamer (JRC 4558 chip), I soldered a barrel plug to a 9V battery clip and plugged it into the external power jack of the effect. This way, I could install one type of battery inside of the pedal and attach a different type to the clip. I started the test with the external battery plugged in, then I unplugged it to hear what the internal battery sounded like. I plugged and unplugged the battery several times to make sure I really did hear a difference. This wasn't a blind test but there was enough of a difference that I didn't bother with one.

For a real double-blind test, you could make up several of the barrel plug/9V clips and use them to quickly change batteries. Radio Shack has the parts you will need, and cheap batteries can be found at the 99 cent store. The batteries themselves could be covered with masking tape and marked with random numbers, then the batteries would be selected at random for test. I would want two clips with clearly labled carbon-zinc and alkaline batteries available at all times, this way, the guitarists could listen to them for comparison with the unknown battery. This would be an A/B/X test, but it still counts as blind since no one knows what type of battery is being used as the 'X' battery.

[ceptimus]

For the double blind trial:

Prevent people touching the batteries, even if they are covered in tape - alkaline batteries may be heavier than zinc carbon, or the case may feel hotter/colder, etc. I suppose the batteries could be encased in some protective wrapper, and matched in weight, but this would probably make them too large to fit in the available space.

Make sure that all the batteries are equally fresh.

Rechargable NiCad and/or NiMH batteries could also be included in the trial, with or without prior knowledge by the blinded.

[joe87]

Here is an interesting blind test (http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_11_4/feature-article-blind-test-power-cords-12-2004.html) in which a bunch of audiophiles listened to music played on the same system using a cheap AC power cord and also an expensive one. The result was, they couldn't hear the difference.

[ceptimus]

Nice test and nice report, joe87. :)

[Meffy]

This debate is nothing compared to the disputation over software guitar/bass amplifier simulators versus hardware amp sims versus original hardware... whuff.

(I use IK Multimedia's AmpliTube 2. Don't get me started on dongles.)

[Paulhoff]

Don't forget the pads you put under the equipment. :rolleyes:

PAUL

:) :) :)

[Meffy]

My new mic has a built-in 10dB pad and a low-cut filter, with switch for selecting one or neither. *isproud*

[Yelper]

I just made the mistake of purchasing an audio magazine.

Inside, there is a review of different audio power cords. These just take mains electricity from the socket on the wall the three feet or so to the connector on the back of the amplifier. The prices range from $120 to $220, with the most expensive cord coming out the winner:

I wonder how the audiophiles that believe this bs think the electricity travels for the many miles between the generators and their house wall socket? How do they believe that the super expensive cable that carries the power for the last three feet can make such an enormous difference?

I've got a friend that, although normally sane and rational, swears blind that power cords make a difference to a stereo. Haven't spoken to him in a while, but last time I did, he was saving up for a new power cord, costing 150gbp. I tried to make him see reason, but he adamantly refused to be persuaded (and proclaimed he'd even done a double-blind test).

Strange thing is that he knew all the audiophile crap was bunk, but for some reason believed the power cord actually made a difference.

[Ririon]

I've got a friend that, although normally sane and rational, swears blind that power cords make a difference to a stereo. Haven't spoken to him in a while, but last time I did, he was saving up for a new power cord, costing 150gbp. I tried to make him see reason, but he adamantly refused to be persuaded (and proclaimed he'd even done a double-blind test).

Strange thing is that he knew all the audiophile crap was bunk, but for some reason believed the power cord actually made a difference.
Do you think your friend would be up for a bet?

"If you can tell the difference between your £150 cable and the one that came with the unit in 9 out of 10 times in a double-blind ABX-trial, I will buy it for you and sign an affidavit about your supernatural powers. If not, return it to the shop, give me the money for it, and learn a lesson."

There's no rule that says you can't use your skepticism for personal gain. :cool:

[Bruno Putzeys]

Something I haven't seen mentioned here is the simple fact that a lot of audio gear (most consumer gear but quite a lot of pro stuff as well) is incredibly badly designed. Woos doing engineering basically.

Especially the fancier stuff is badly affected. I've tested devices with such high output impedance that cables made a *measurable* difference. Vacuum tube equipment, usually. Most fancy cables are incorrectly constructed and make very good radio antennae. I'm talking of unshielded cables of the k*mber persuasion and "pseudo balanced" cables with rca plugs on either end but the shield connected at one end only.
To tap into the vibration and microphonics lore, the fascination for silver and teflon produces cables that are actually worse than anything else in this respect. In combination with the aforementioned high impedance connections such cables actually pick up acoustic noise. This is not a joke: to anyone who wishes to stop over here I'll do a demo with an audiophile cable in a sensitive input producing a larsen effect with a connected loudspeaker.
Hence my standard quip that "I've never heard an unusually good cable but boy have I heard some bad ones." But of course, when by chance those guys hear a real difference, they'll proclaim it's better.
While we're on the RFI front I've seen CD players and power amplifiers that knock out every radio receiver in the vicinity. To add insult to injury, most gear is awfully sensitive to radio interference. The result is that some gear effectively performs better when the last few metres of mains cable are shielded.

In other words, quite a few of claims of perceived differences might actually be grounded in some reality. You can design equipment that's so bad that mains and interconnect cables etc make an actual difference. Likewise you can make cables that are so bloody faulty that they'll affect nearly any type of equipment. The only thing that tells you is that indeed, something is wrong.

I can't honestly say that the pro audio world is free of woo. Live sound is mostly ok, but I've been to mastering studios that were entirely wired using unbalanced connections (the type used in home equipment), "to make the signal path simpler". Well, the best way of inviting rubbish into your audio is an unbalanced connection. Of course, then it's back to listening to problems that shouldn't have been there to begin with. Sorry for the rant. Must've had a bad drink.

[jon]

and, of course, if audio equipment is easily messed up by interference/the 'wrong' cable/CDs that aren't quite clean...etc...this is seen as a sign of how high end and sensitive it is :)

[Ririon]

Something I haven't seen mentioned here is the simple fact that a lot of audio gear (most consumer gear but quite a lot of pro stuff as well) is incredibly badly designed. Woos doing engineering basically.

Especially the fancier stuff is badly affected...

...

Sorry for the rant. Must've had a bad drink.
Point fingers! Name names! If you need to, have a drink first. I am not buying electronics inspired by Atlantis technology, so please provide some facts and blatant accusations.

(My KEF active subwoofer just started picking up 50 Hz hum even without the input connected. Hope that's not one of them.)

[Bruno Putzeys]

Not publicly, dear. I make money helping these people build better stuff, and shaming them in public is not a way of attracting customers.

[jimlintott]

Something I haven't seen mentioned here is the simple fact that a lot of audio gear (most consumer gear but quite a lot of pro stuff as well) is incredibly badly designed. Woos doing engineering basically.

Here is an interesting article (http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/audioprinciples/amplifiers/ACDTEST.php) about power rating of amplifiers. It's mentioned in the article that some high end or exotic equipment doesn't even have proper safety ratings. Sometimes it may be due to not getting them but there is the possibility that some equipment couldn't get it.

To me, that really raises the possibilty of some exotic equipment being poorly designed.

[Paulhoff]

I want to scream and kill things. I went up to mountains in Pa. to see a friend who is an audiophile. While I was up there, (you will not believe this) he got a package from some company for him to test (here it comes) and in it was Power Cables, a silver one no less. After he told me he had to brake them in for 40 hours, I loss it. There is more, but I didn’t kill him. He told me I didn’t understand the science behind it all, well of course he is the one who believes in the false science feed to him by to audiophile world.

Paul

:) :) :)

[Bruno Putzeys]

Screaming or killing isn't a rational reaction either :P. One strategy which I'm considering using in such cases is the following:
1) Invite the person to do a blind test (a proper one with multiple rounds so you can compare the score with pure luck) to compare his power cable with a standard one. If he takes the test, make note of how he tries to weasle his way out of the inevitable conclusion. If he refuses to take the test, note down the excuses he makes.
2) Point him towards Randi's comments on dowsers and their post-test excuses. With a bit of luck the scales will fall off.

[Paulhoff]

Oh, you poor, dear, innocent person. Don’t you know the mind of these audiophiles, do a double blind test, no way will they. They can hear it with their ears and double blind tests are only ways a hide the truth that they hold so dear.

If I tell him about Randi, (who I know), my friend just writes him off as a conman, and the million dollars has a fraud.

No, killing is the only way.

Paul

:) :) :)

[Bruno Putzeys]

I don't think you know me very well. I'm a hard-boiled audiophile. I call myself that because I thoroughly enjoy listening to high-quality reproduced music in the privacy of the home, not because I listen to mains cables (which obviously I don't).

However, until a few years ago I've been knee-deep into stuff like cable woo (line level and speaker cables) and valve amplifiers. I was also very religious. At some point I started to question my religious beliefs seriously. I subsequently fell off religion followed by residual beliefs in any other paranormal concept. Really I have no idea how it was possible for me to come off religion on my own while others just keep going in circles "searching for the truth". I sometimes speculate that being autistic and thus having to rely on conscious thought for nearly everything I do might have a part in it.

Anyhow it became inevitable that my reasons for believing in audio-woo were astoundingly similar to the manner in which paranormal woo was "defended". So I was forced to clean up those beliefs too. The best way to do so is to do properly controlled experiments and accept them. Or as I explained in http://www.randi.org/jr/2006-01/010606netherlands.html#i9 to keep one's mind open to see yourself in the act of being utterly fooled. To be honest, events such as the latter are even more convincing than the db trials, as you can always (in good cognitive-dissonance fashion) try to weasel your way out by questioning the validity of the test.

Since that time I spend much more time measuring the circuits that I develop, only doing quick listening tests at the end of the process to make sure that my objective (measurable) design goals were correctly chosen (and in all fairness just to enjoy the fruits of a work well done).

What's more remarkable is that since then I'm getting much more critical acclaim for my designs than before, lots of it from the people who "trust their ears only" and from magazines who themselves are thoroughly into audio religion.

But all this to say that in order to understand what makes a religious audiophile tick I only have to travel a few years back in time. The only thing I don't know is how I can use this experience to get other people to take the same step.

[Paulhoff]

Religion, paranormal, and audio woo seem to go hand in hand. Audiophile woo believers are most likely to believe in the religion and paranormal along with there beloved flying saucers (I do not use the UFO term here because if you identified it has a flying saucer then it is no longer an Unidentified Flying Object).

Has for changing wire etc always sounding better, it does not for my audiophile friend. But I am very sure that is does sound the way he expects it to because nothing he uses is not seen by him.

Remember the GREEN MARKER on the edge of the CD. Wellllll, my friend (vinyl and tube and god believer person) came over my house with a CD with, oh noooooo, the GREEN MARKER edge. Well he knew that I have the same CD, and here we go, the NON-BLIND test. Well he and my son (about 12 at the time, now 29) agreed that the GREEN WINNE sounded better. Welllll, I started to stand in front of the player and when he said change, I went thru the motions and didn't. They still heard a different, until I showed them the truth that it wasn’t the one they thought it was. We did this several times, and more and more mistakes were done by them. Why, because there was no difference, NOOOOO my friend said it was because their ears were getting tired, and not that they were wrong. Kill, kill, kill.

Paul

:) :) :)

[Bruno Putzeys]

Yeah! Cognitive dissonance reduction rulez!

Poor Paul, how can you live in this evil, evil world ;)

[Paulhoff]

The killing helps a hell of a lot.

Paul

:) :) :)

[pipelineaudio]

sadly

oh so sadly

those who should seem to know MUCH better, are going on about this

real audio engineers

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/mv/msg/9441/0/0/937/

[bjb]

I was hoping those recording engineers would have the guts to post A-B clips with the different power cables, but no such luck. Fortunately, I haven't run across engineers like this here in Southern California. It was nice to see a lot of skeptical audio engineers. Maybe sound engineers are more aware of their ability to fool themselves. I know I've tricked myself into hearing changes in sound when adjusting equipment that I later find was not hooked up in the first place! I know I can fool myself into hearing things that won't show up in A/B testing, but no audiophile will ever admit to that.

A friend of mine teaches music production at Peirce College in the valley. He and his students have recorded and mixed quite a number of projects:

http://web.mac.com/philbeau1/iWeb/p3400/Welcome.html

Maybe I should talk to him about giving some information on audio pseudoscience to his students. This guy did have an electrican come to his studio and check out the power, and even though the power looked fine, he's installing power conditioning equipment. It costs about $1400 for a system that can power all of his studio equipment and it includes battery backup. Now that everything is being recorded to a hard drive so power failures are potentially more destructive than in the days of multitrack tapes. Other studios in L.A. are using these power conditioners/battery backup systems and although there are rumors of improved audio performance, the main reason for installing the equpiment is to prevent loss of data and studio time.

[Paulhoff]

Pseudoscience is so prevalent in this world that I am sick of it. People will take a little science and blow it all out of proportion. I have just had a very big discussing with my born-again mother about evolution and how a radio station she listens to said evolution is a lie. My mother has no, no, no science background that all, so these woo-woo people can con her. This is the same thing with audio woo-woo. There is a great need for some people to have a world that as more to it then meets the eye, without knowing that it is already that will out all the woo-woo put out there, if only they would take to time to learn. But that will not happen, that would take work, time and the ability to throw out all the woo-woo that they believe in.

Paul

:) :) :)

[Yahzi]

But that will not happen, that would take work,
Or just a lot of killin'.

:D

[NeilC]

My friend has a very expensive stereo (CD player costing over £7000 alone). All his kit is plugged into a power source which provides smoothed out AC apparantly and all connected via expensive silver cables.

We did a blind hearing with and without this supply and the effect was instantly noticable.

[Paulhoff]

Someone else switched the power for you so you did not know which was which and then rated your responses.

Paul

:) :) :)

[NeilC]

Yeah his girlfriend did the switching. Seemed like a reasonably obvious difference to me. Not a difference worth even £50 yet alone the price he paid but a difference.

Whether this was down to this supposed "power smoothing" box or the cables or pure chance or our imagination is impossible to say for certain.

[jon]

If his 'high end' equipment is overly sensitive to mains interference, it's possible that his power source was really helping. That said, it's pretty shocking that expensive equipment often doesn't deal adequately with such interference - if sony can design a £70 cd player without such problems, a £7k CD should certainly be better made :)

[Meffy]

I got much better sound from my virtual Mellotron after replacing the coffee-stained, cigarette-burnt cabinet graphics with shiny, clean new Formica pixels.

[Bruno Putzeys]

If Paulhoff wants to kill every audio woowooist, I merely want to butcher that unspeakable idiot who got it into his head to use one conductor for signal reference, to equalise chassis potentials and to shield the other conductor. Reall, coax for low frequencies!!! The resistance of the shield is THE way for ground currents (such as mains leakage currents coupling through the transformer) to break into your audio.
There's only one right way of interconnecting analogue audio equipment and that's balanced I/O per AES48. Anything else is creating a market for mains conditioners and fancy cables.

[Paulhoff]

Killed by a very slow and painful death, thank you. If a girlfriend is changing the source when you are in the room, then it is not a double blind test.

Paul

:) :) :)

Soooo slow that their eyes pop.

[Paulhoff]

If his 'high end' equipment is overly sensitive to mains interference, it's possible that his power source was really helping. That said, it's pretty shocking that expensive equipment often doesn't deal adequately with such interference - if sony can design a £70 cd player without such problems, a £7k CD should certainly be better made :)

That is the biggest thing about all this, it is so simple now a days to filler any crap coming in on the main lines.

Paul

:) :) :)

Not a difference worth even £50 yet alone the price he paid but a difference.

This makes so scense to me at all, a instantly noticable difference to one not worth the money.

[Bruno Putzeys]

If a girlfriend is changing the source when you are in the room, then it is not a double blind test.
I suppose placing the electronics in a different room from the speakers is too obvious a way to insure blinding.
Killed by a very slow and painful death, thank you. (...)Soooo slow that their eyes pop.
May I worry about your mental stability now? :)

[Paulhoff]

Why, because I write what everyone is afraid to. Geeeeeee

No the change is made when you are out of the room and she is not there when you come in. She keeps notes on what is in line each time and you keep notes on each time you listen. Then after the test you compare.

Paul

:) :) :)

Would murder be better then just plain kill.

[Bruno Putzeys]

That would certainly insure blinding (especially if the room has 2 doors and experimenter and subject use different ones with a "blanking delay") but I would recommend a switchbox and a PC :)

[Paulhoff]

My friend has a very expensive stereo (CD player costing over £7000 alone). All his kit is plugged into a power source which provides smoothed out AC apparantly and all connected via expensive silver cables.

We did a blind hearing with and without this supply and the effect was instantly noticable.

That to me would be a big difference, but that is me. You do not know how many times my friend would notice a change right from the start when he does anything, so what is the big problem now with a minute in-between the listening unless there is nothing to really hear.

That would certainly insure blinding (especially if the room has 2 doors and experimenter and subject use different ones with a "blanking delay") but I would recommend a switchbox and a PC :)

But don't you know, the first thing to come out of the audiophile's mouth would be that the switchbox would be introducing a sound change that will throw off his testing.

Paul

:) :) :)

[Verde]

My friend has a very expensive stereo (CD player costing over £7000 alone). All his kit is plugged into a power source which provides smoothed out AC apparantly and all connected via expensive silver cables.

We did a blind hearing with and without this supply and the effect was instantly noticable.

With supply, amplifier works. Nice sound.

Without supply, nothing works. No sound.

Yep, certainly very noticeable.

[jeh]

If Paulhoff wants to kill every audio woowooist, I merely want to butcher that unspeakable idiot who got it into his head to use one conductor for signal reference, to equalise chassis potentials and to shield the other conductor. Reall, coax for low frequencies!!! The resistance of the shield is THE way for ground currents (such as mains leakage currents coupling through the transformer) to break into your audio.


And baseband video... Hum bars, anyone?


There's only one right way of interconnecting analogue audio equipment and that's balanced I/O per AES48. Anything else is creating a market for mains conditioners and fancy cables.

There have been fads for balanced connections (I refuse to call them "interconnects"; that name was coined by the "high end" cable marketers when the business got started in the early 70s, because they just couldn't sell anything called a "patch cable" for any extra money) in high-end audio for some time, but they never managed to replace the awful old RCA/Cinch plugs.

Funnily enough, they never proposed using balanced I/O in the place it was needed most: From the phono cartridge to the preamp!

Fact is that in most home a/v installations the unbalanced connections don't really do much audible harm, and balanced I/O does increase costs, and of course the low end of this market is very price- and margin-sensitive and RCA/Cinch connectors are really really cheap. But on those rare occasions where they do cause problems, you're just sort of stuck.

It gets really bad when home gear gets dragged into the pro or semipro environment and expected to work well with long cable runs, ungrounded plugs plugged into multiple circuits' outlets, connections to pro gear, etc.

[Paulhoff]

As I have written somewhere before. If the audio signals going from the amp to the speakers were changed by the wire as many audiophiles who buy into the woo-woo think then when I transmit on the 440 MHz ham band I would be all over the spectrum and the FCC would be coming down on me. Of course this does not happen to either. Isn’t funny that only audio seems to have a problem with metal for these people.

Paul

:) :) :)

[Paulhoff]

If ones eyes can be fooled, so can ones ears.

http://forums.randi.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=1057&d=1139942791

Paul

:) :) :)

[kevin]

My friend has a very expensive stereo (CD player costing over £7000 alone). All his kit is plugged into a power source which provides smoothed out AC apparantly and all connected via expensive silver cables.

We did a blind hearing with and without this supply and the effect was instantly noticable.


try keeping the power source but replacing the expensive silver cables with regular copper ones.

A good UPS (one that protects against voltage sags as well as outages) will provide a decently clean AC signal. If the equipment is that touchy and the power that poor then this could indeed have an affect, although a double blind test would be better than a blind test to confirm.

The silver cables are doing crap though.

[LeFevre]

I think power chords can greatly enhance and audio performance. Take, for instance, the Kinks "You Really Got Me". That G5 - F5 riff really grabs the listener at the begining of the song. :cool:
My Deity, you must have been communing with me because that is what I thought when I read the thread title :D :D :D :D

*Incinerates owls for Lord HighEmperor SkinnyGod*

[Bruno Putzeys]

Funnily enough, they never proposed using balanced I/O in the place it was needed most: From the phono cartridge to the preamp!
That has left me stumped too...
Fact is that in most home a/v installations the unbalanced connections don't really do much audible harm, and balanced I/O does increase costs, and of course the low end of this market is very price- and margin-sensitive and RCA/Cinch connectors are really really cheap. But on those rare occasions where they do cause problems, you're just sort of stuck.
I would not count $7k CD players and preamps as cost-sensitive...
It gets really bad when home gear gets dragged into the pro or semipro environment and expected to work well with long cable runs, ungrounded plugs plugged into multiple circuits' outlets, connections to pro gear, etc.
I've found whole mastering studios done using unbalanced wiring :( for reasons of "signal path minimalism".

[Paulhoff]

A friend of mine does not understand that copper has the same properties of silver when it comes to electricity, it only has little more resistance, and increasing the gage by 1 will more then offset that different.

Paul

:) :) :)

[ktesibios]

If Paulhoff wants to kill every audio woowooist, I merely want to butcher that unspeakable idiot who got it into his head to use one conductor for signal reference, to equalise chassis potentials and to shield the other conductor. Reall, coax for low frequencies!!! The resistance of the shield is THE way for ground currents (such as mains leakage currents coupling through the transformer) to break into your audio.
There's only one right way of interconnecting analogue audio equipment and that's balanced I/O per AES48. Anything else is creating a market for mains conditioners and fancy cables.

Couldn't agree more. And if equipment manufacturers would get it through their heads that a cable shield is an extension of the equipment enclosure and not something you want connected to your input or output circuit's internal 0V reference, life would be so much more pleasant for the poor downtrodden audio techie.

Of course, even in pro audio, which is where I work, it took the majority of manufacturers something like thirty years to realize that there is a formal industrial standard for wiring XLR-type connectors (pin 2 is signal +, @#$%it!) and start conforming to it.

[bigred]

All attempts at getting the people who claim they can hear a difference to actually prove it (in a blind test f.inst.) have been futile. Go figure. They "don't wanna" do it - "can't be bothered". "Go listen for your selves, and you will easily hear the difference", they tell us, and nobody has been able to provide any arguments, whatsoever, as to why they should not have been influenced by the, very real and widely acknowledged, placebo effect (I'm an audio engineer by profession, so believe me, I know the placebo effect! :))

lol. And such has been the case with stereo systems for decades - ie as technology improved, the NOTICEABLE diff's between systems has shrunk. I would bet my entire net worth that I could put a Yahmaha, Sony, Denon, Pioneer, Sherwood, heck maybe even some goofy Emerson BS next to each other and play each and in most cases few if any people could tell the diff...never mind the alleged diff's from one model to the other.

[Paulhoff]

The weakest link in the audio system can be said in three words,

SPEAKERS SPEAKERS SPEADERS

Paul

:) :) :)

[jimlintott]

The weakest link in the audio system can be said in three words,

SPEAKERS SPEAKERS SPEADERS

Paul

:) :) :)
I couldn't agree more. If you go listen to various speakers it becomes obvious that they are the easiest piece of audio equipment to tell the differences between.

When it comes to other audio equipment the differences are less. However I have heard differences between amplifiers but only entry level pieces compared to much better pieces and then only when the speakers are good enough to reveal those differences. I would sum up the differences as distortion. When you compare an entry level amp that is rated 100 w/ch 1000hz at 10% THD to a more expensive amp that is rated 100 w/ch 20 - 20000hz at .01% THD there is a difference. The sound is less harsh and at high volumes the better amp sounds quieter to most people. I still think many people correlate distortion with volume and if they've never heard clean loud music they don't realise it. I'm also pretty sure that poor power supplies in cheaper equipment can effect high volume listening when it is unable to deliver adequate current for the job.

Almost as subtle as amps is signal processing. The cheapest most basic DACs don't do as good a job as the best. I'm not sure why and the differences can be similar to CD vs MP3 but I suspect distortion and artifacts come into play.

At the bottom of the list for effecting sound is interconnects and speaker wire. I have never heard a difference between the cheapest interconnects and some very high end ones unless something is broken. The expensive interconnects are better made and more durable but I've never heard a sound difference. I've never heard a difference in wire guage for speakers although it is easy to see that wire that is too small could have problems with high power. The wire is either capable of conducting the current or it isn't.

Of course this is all subjective and I could be crazy but even not considering speakers, to think that all audio equipment sounds the same is like saying all beer tastes the same.

As I'm in the midst of researching and designing a new Home Theatre room for my house I've discovered that the room itself may rival speakers for it's effect on sound. Probably the second weakest link in a sound system.

[Paulhoff]

At the bottom of the list for effecting sound is interconnects and speaker wire. I have never heard a difference between the cheapest interconnects and some very high end ones unless something is broken. The expensive interconnects are better made and more durable but I've never heard a sound difference. I've never heard a difference in wire guage for speakers although it is easy to see that wire that is too small could have problems with high power. The wire is either capable of conducting the current or it isn't.

I agree with this. I no problem paying more for and RCA connection that is better made, but only to a point. As for speaker connection 12 AWG is more then enough.

Paul

:) :) :)

[Paulhoff]

If anyone is still reading this, the site below seems to be on the up and up and does not buy into the Woo Woo BS.

http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/audioprinciples/interconnects/DielectricAbsorption.php

Paul

:) :) :)

[Schneibster]

OK, so here's my story: I have a stereo guitar amp and happened to blow the output push-pull pair of one channel (the power amp is a Lin topology amplifier) on a very hot day while playing far too loudly. I got lucky and didn't blow any speakers. So I decide I'm gonna fix it up- I lay hands on the correct transistors, and then start asking questions on an audiophile design site about the power supply (which is an unregulated piece of crap whose buzzing is irritating me- might as well make it go away while I've got the chassis open, right?)

You never heard so much woo in your life. It was unbelievable. I actually had people telling me that regulation of the power supply was a waste of time, that I should be using these enormous capacitors to do the job instead, and that removing the ripple any other way would cause more hum. Gah.

After going through several design iterations, what I wound up with is a capacitive multiplier- essentially, what you do is use a transistor to amplify the value of a capacitor and get a nice smooth signal; the regulation is crap, but who cares on the rails of a Lin amp? While I was at it, I replaced the EI core transformer with a toroid to which I had added a couple of extra windings to get the voltage I wanted, and did a better job of decoupling the main heatsink, not to mention adding a fan to improve the heat handling. The amp now runs far cooler, has more power output (the transistors I chose are the same series, but the next higher power and amperage rating), and the hum is essentially GONE. To top it all off, the toroid is 2 pounds lighter than the EI transformer it originally came with, and because a toroid keeps the magnetic flux inside the transformer instead of spewing it out everywhere, it's both more efficient and some annoying hum from the reverb coil has also been improved because it's subject to less EMI.

But boy did I ever have to suppress my anti-woo instincts to find out what I needed to know from those folks! And the woo on that site was so thick you could cut it with a knife- right on up to the 0-gauge speaker cables we have discussed here before.

[pipelineaudio]

Fortunately, I haven't run across engineers like this here in Southern California.

The cynic in me wants to scream that this means you havent met ANY audio engineers in Southern California then :)

That is the audio woo woo capital of the world

Summing test after summing test notwithstanding, the majority from my little unofficial poll believe one brand of software has magic summing properties, though i is shown to null exactly with any other working audio software on a summ

[pipelineaudio]

I suppose placing the electronics in a different room from the speakers is too obvious a way to insure blinding.


No, because then you open up the can of worms of using speaker cables over a foot long :)

wait, directional ones

wait, oxygen free ones

wait, will you be playing the degaussing CD in between takes ? :)

think Im kidding? http://www.densen.dk/products/demagic/demagic.htm

[Ducky]

is the link to the mercury filled speaker cables still in this thread? That one still makes me laugh...

[Schneibster]

To people who don't understand how electronics really work, it seems like magic. Ditto software. So they invoke magical laws on it and expect it to work- and the placebo response tells them it has. Go hang out with some photographers sometime.

Personally, when I buy audio equipment, I make them hook up the candidate components, and then I play carefully chosen test material through it. You should hear the sneering I get from the salesmen who want to sell me the big expensive one that sounds worse. They usually shut up when I tell them I'm a musician. And they always shut up when I make their big fancy amps and speakers drop out frequencies by playing material that has high impulse at multiple frequencies simultaneously- and then hook up the $300 one and it works fine.

Not that you don't get better quality for more money- just that a great deal of the really fancy stuff is built by people who subscribe to some of this woo and wind up compromising the actual performance with their obesiances to the woo gods. I've found some brands that I like, and in general I'll take solid design practices and good electronic component sourcing over gold contacts and outrageously overdone capacitive filtering and outrageously expensive A-class operation any day.

[Ducky]

To people who don't understand how electronics really work, it seems like magic. Ditto software. So they invoke magical laws on it and expect it to work- and the placebo response tells them it has. Go hang out with some photographers sometime.

Personally, when I buy audio equipment, I make them hook up the candidate components, and then I play carefully chosen test material through it. You should hear the sneering I get from the salesmen who want to sell me the big expensive one that sounds worse. They usually shut up when I tell them I'm a musician. And they always shut up when I make their big fancy amps and speakers drop out frequencies by playing material that has high impulse at multiple frequencies simultaneously- and then hook up the $300 one and it works fine.

Not that you don't get better quality for more money- just that a great deal of the really fancy stuff is built by people who subscribe to some of this woo and wind up compromising the actual performance with their obesiances to the woo gods. I've found some brands that I like, and in general I'll take solid design practices and good electronic component sourcing over gold contacts and outrageously overdone capacitive filtering and outrageously expensive A-class operation any day.

What test material do you use?

I generally use a set of test tones I generated and recorded in specific orders. Is yours a home creation, or is it a purchased test cd?

[Schneibster]

Oh, the ONE AND ONLY reason for using gold plated contacts? They take longer to corrode. So I use them on equipment that's inconvenient to hook up, so I don't have to climb back there and fiddle with the connectors as often.

[Paulhoff]

If they are real gold plated contacts, they should never corroded, get dirty yes, corroded never.

I have a friend who believes in wire brake-in and we have had big arguments about it. He even has new companies sending him power wires etc to test and evaluate. When I was at his house and he read me that there should be a 40 hour break in period for a silver power cable, I just lost it.

Paul

:) :) :)

A forum he goes to is Audiogon

[Schneibster]

What test material do you use?

I generally use a set of test tones I generated and recorded in specific orders. Is yours a home creation, or is it a purchased test cd?I have an audio test tone CD that I like, it's a pretty old one out of a magazine, but that's just for starters- eliminates the complete trash. I don't spend much time on it.

Good test material has prominent content at multiple frequencies simultaneously- bass/mid, bass/treble, mid/treble, and/or a combination of all three, with distinctive enough sounds at the prominent frequencies that you can hear any distortion of the waveform, or diminution of the sound level. Particularly good ones have passages where a single instrument plays a theme, and is then joined by instruments in other ranges- the best has various passages where different instruments take the theme solo, then everybody chimes in.

Heavy bass places large current demand on the output transistors, and on the power supply filter caps. It also places the bass speaker elements under the maximum mechanical stress. You want to listen for really crisp response here- any muddiness indicates problems in one of these commonly overlooked areas. When combined with treble or mid, you can listen to see if the other frequency robs volume from the bass- or vice versa. This is a common crossover design fault, present in some surprisingly expensive transducers.

I generally begin with Mannheim Steamroller- Fresh Aire 4 is my usual choice. "Crystal" tests how the system responds to electronic music- "G Major Toccata" is an excellent test of the same sort of thing for acoustic instruments. Look particularly for instruments in the midrange and treble to lose or rob power to or from the bass. Chip Davis insists on impeccable engineering. For ambient and swells, try "Dancing Flames." Listen for distortion. And listen to the triangles at all times- they should always be crisp, never distorted and never too quiet.

I then move on to more rock-oriented material. Yes' Close to the Edge, while rather noisy in the mix, due to some unorthodox engineering practices, has some extremely challenging material in "And You And I," particularly where it moves from the acoustic beginning to the heavily processed middle movement, and in "Siberian Khatru," where you should listen to see if Jon Anderson's voice gets overrun by the heavy guitar riffs, which it does not on the recording but often does on a system with crossover problems.

Next comes Steely Dan's Aja, for the gentle but well-defined bass and tricky-to-reproduce guitar rhythms of "Deacon Blues," and the heavily-processed "Josie," and then on to "Kid Charlemagne" from The Royal Scam. Look for muddiness in the midrange- that mellotron should sound crisp and clear over the vocals and guitars, not distorted and not compressed.

Then fully into modern jazz- try "Etude" from Color Rit, by Lee Ritenour, listen for the bass to lose or rob power to or from the guitar. "Blues for TJ" from Larry Carlton's Friends tests for good response to bluesy stuff.

Last but not least, be sure to try some DVD material. I recommend movies with loud effects and a great deal of movement. You'd be surprised how good a test the "THX" theme that plays at the beginnings of material that conforms to these standards is. I like "Independence Day" for the fact that it has this theme, for the "whoosh" sounds that go to the rear during the title part, and for the explosions when the cities are demolished.

Overall, this takes an hour or more, but I've never been disappointed with a piece of equipment that I subjected to these tests after I got it home and played other material on it.

If you're curious, I own a pair of Polk Audio stereo speakers, use Bose 301s for my rear speakers, a Polk Audio center speaker, and an Infiniti sub. I power them from an Onkyo amp at about 100W/channel for the front three and 35W/channel for the rears, and when the depth charges go off in "Das Boot," the windows rattle. I could no doubt get marginally more performance by spending eight times as much as I did.

My studio rig is an old 35W Kenwood amp driving a pair of JBL Decades and a pair of Fisher 12" three-ways; it stands up OK to my guitar amp when I want to practice along with something, and does a fine job of playing back my recordings with a minimum of change in tone and color. If the Onkyo ever blows up, which I doubt it ever will, I will probably buy another one unless someone has done a better job since I bought it; it's worth noting that the spec sheet gave it better THD specs than several more expensive amps, and my listening tests bore these specs out. I've never had anyone who came over to watch a movie or listen to some music comment on it; to my mind, that's as it should be. It's about the material, not the equipment.

[Schneibster]

Oh, one more note: the material should be stuff you are intimately familiar with, and you should have listened to it previously on a competent amp with a really expensive pair of headphones. This is the most accurate reproduction possible. I particularly like my AKG K270s, I'm not a fan of Sennheisers because they have some trouble reproducing really crisp deep bass, YMMV- but you should be spending in the neighborhood of $200 on them, and they should be professional audio engineer grade. I have never heard speakers that outperform my AKGs, and I've heard a heckuvalot of speakers.

[Topspy]

Audiophiles: Don't listen to these sceptik freaks! We are correct; a good clean, well designed power cord can make a ton of difference! I know, because my years of reseach have led me to develop my 'power conductor" Power cords that dramatically influence audio quality! Electrons spin: when they reach your smaller household conductors, they tend to mix spins, giving an unpredictable response. My Power Conductor cords are specially treated to cause all elecron spins to converge in one direction. giving smoother response and less distortion. My power cords may LOOK like conventional power cords, but my secret treatment makes them perform like no other! The treatment involves high magnetic fields and cryrogenics however and is quite expensive..... THIS is why exotic power cord technology is so expensive. My cords, which look exactly like radio shack power cords, cost a mere $100. A bargain next to some other high end audio power cords! Send me an email and find out why you can benifit from ULTRA Perfomance Quantum Magnetic Superconducting Resonance-enhanced Power-facilitators NOW! satisfaction guaranteed.

[Topspy]

Oh, the ONE AND ONLY reason for using gold plated contacts? They take longer to corrode. So I use them on equipment that's inconvenient to hook up, so I don't have to climb back there and fiddle with the connectors as often.


Oh... and gold doen't corrode.. at least not in the conventional sense.....

[Schneibster]

I've replaced gold plated connectors that had corroded. Just not very often. ;)

[Topspy]

AND.... I once had a coworker who only bought gold-plated CDs, claiming that they sounded better. I asked him what part of gold plating made those ones and zeros sound better? But it was futile......

[Ducky]

AND.... I once had a coworker who only bought gold-plated CDs, claiming that they sounded better. I asked him what part of gold plating made those ones and zeros sound better? But it was futile......

Did your coworker even understand the mechanics of a CD? the reflective surface has nothing to do with the binary encoded in the plastic...


Ps, while funny, your power cord joke makes me wince...

[Paulhoff]

Oh... and gold doen't corrode.. at least not in the conventional sense.....

Oh please, in the everyday world it doesn't. :rolleyes:

Paul

:) :) :)

[Ririon]

OK...

Who is going to name names?

Give me an example of a relatively popular and/or hyped brand that is quite expensive but really just woo BS.

Please. :)

[jon]

here you go - http://www.russandrews.com/lookup/1/region/UK/currency/GBP/customer_id/PAA0396100006297YVKIFOOIXHXCURRU/product-The-Silver-Reference-PowerKord-1046.htm

If you ask me nicely, I can sell you a power cable that works just as well for half the price :D

[Paulhoff]

http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/audioprinciples/interconnects/speakercablereviewsfaceoff.php

Paul

:) :) :)

[Ducky]

Anything by Golden Sound. (http://www.goldensound.com/)

[Ririon]

How about amplifiers? I'd love to get an example of a fancy-looking mid-priced amplifier that is really just a piece of junk... :)

[ZirconBlue]

Ya know, I really only read these "audiophile"-type of threads to read people bashing Bose. So, bring on the Bose-bash! Please.

[jon]

How about amplifiers? I'd love to get an example of a fancy-looking mid-priced amplifier that is really just a piece of junk... :)

How's this - http://www.stereophile.com/tubepoweramps/704wavac/index5.html

Not mid-priced, though.

[Schneibster]

Bose.

ETA: LOL, there you go- I posted in response to Ririon before I saw your reply.

[Paulhoff]

Bose progress thru advertising. Bash bash bash.

Paul

:) :) :)

[Schneibster]

How's this - http://www.stereophile.com/tubepoweramps/704wavac/index5.html

Not mid-priced, though.No kidding- "see, our distortion is special distortion that makes it sound better. No, really! Hey, where are you going?"

[Paulhoff]

No kidding- "see, our distortion is special distortion that makes it sound better. No, really! Hey, where are you going?"

Euphonic Distortion!

Paul

:) :) :)

[Disco]

How's this - http://www.stereophile.com/tubepoweramps/704wavac/index5.html

Not mid-priced, though.

Wavac's been very, very good to me. ;)

MHB

[Schneibster]

Oh, I never said it didn't sound good; just that it's not accurate. And with all that distortion, I bet I could find some music that would sound awful on it.

[bjb]

How's this - http://www.stereophile.com/tubepoweramps/704wavac/index5.html

Not mid-priced, though.

The high-end rolloff and 2nd harmonic distortion is why guitar players like tube amps. I've always suspected tube audiophiles also liked these characteristics but were afraid to admit it.

The droop and ringing in the squarewave response is just awful, much worse than I've seen in even cheap guitar amps from the 60's. I would
suspect there was something wrong with the amp, maybe even the lead dress is bad and is causing parasitic oscillation? Whatever the problem, it's a pretty poor excuse for a tube amp, even by a guitarist's standards.

[Ducky]

The high-end rolloff and 2nd harmonic distortion is why guitar players like tube amps. I've always suspected tube audiophiles also liked these characteristics but were afraid to admit it.

The droop and ringing in the squarewave response is just awful, much worse than I've seen in even cheap guitar amps from the 60's. I would
suspect there was something wrong with the amp, maybe even the lead dress is bad and is causing parasitic oscillation? Whatever the problem, it's a pretty poor excuse for a tube amp, even by a guitarist's standards.

Agreed. I would suspect that my Mesa 50/50 or Carvin 100w Stereo tube rackmounts could reproduce better sound than that.

In fact, I bet I could string some 12ax7's and 6l6's together on a stripped telelphone cord coated in feces with rusty components taken from a 1982 Plymouth Horizon and make an amp that sounded better.

Was it assembled by monkeys?

On a side note, I would think that the extreme audiophile would not WANT the same things about their amps as guitarists. using guitar amps is specifically trying to well...create distortion. If the sound is to be pristine, I would imagine they would want the cleanest amp possible.

Is not the point "high fidelity?"

What gets me is how much they don't realize the production of what they are listening to matters. Case in point: I know a guy who's father is 100% audiophile woo, and has an ipod hooked up to his mega-cost system.

Why? So he can listen to the exact nuances of a lossy digital format?

[Paulhoff]

The problem is that many so-called audiophiles are very subjective and not objective at all. I wonder as to how many also believe in a god, mmmmmm, another subject that is very subjective.

Paul

:) :) :)

[jon]

The droop and ringing in the squarewave response is just awful, much worse than I've seen in even cheap guitar amps from the 60's. I would
suspect there was something wrong with the amp, maybe even the lead dress is bad and is causing parasitic oscillation?

An amp so well built, you can't tell whether or not the one you've got is malfunctioning :D

[Schneibster]

Agreed. ... In fact, I bet I could string some 12ax7's and 6l6's together on a stripped telelphone cord coated in feces with rusty components taken from a 1982 Plymouth Horizon and make an amp that sounded better.I have no doubt you are correct. Tube woo is some of the most irritating woo out there, because it's just barely nearly enough correct to almost seem to make sense; that's because it's all derived from the fact that rock musicians use tube amps to get just the right type of distortion from their instruments, from which fact the woo-mongers have built an entire mythology based on a complete misunderstanding of what these musicians are trying to accomplish.

[bjb]

I have no doubt you are correct. Tube woo is some of the most irritating woo out there, because it's just barely nearly enough correct to almost seem to make sense; that's because it's all derived from the fact that rock musicians use tube amps to get just the right type of distortion from their instruments, from which fact the woo-mongers have built an entire mythology based on a complete misunderstanding of what these musicians are trying to accomplish.

The tubes vs. transistors debate goes back a long time. I have some old electronics magazines from the early 60's and there were a few articles on the subject. The way I see it, the early solid-state amps were a new technology trying to compete with a very mature technology. For example, one problem was the germanium power transistors that were used at the time. Germanium is not stable with respect to temperature which caused them to draw more current when they heated up. The extra current draw makes them heat up more, which causes even more current flow. This is called thermal runaway and some of the early amp makers did not know how to design around it.

Anyway, the general crappiness of early solid-state amps gave them the poor reputation they have today. In the guitar world, the Fender company came out with a full line of solid-state amps but they were so terrible they lasted only one year. These amps are rare but even collectors don't want them. These days, Fender sells mostly solid-state amps but their top-of-the-line amps are all tube.

Even in the tube world, there is a debate between triode vs. power pentode tubes (6L6, 6V6, etc.). When the pentodes came along in the 30's, they didn't sound the same as the earlier triodes. It turns out the pentode tubes have a much higher output impedance so the amps sounded differently. Once again, the early designers didn't know how to deal with the 'new' technology and the pentodes recieved a poor reputation that remains to this day. Even now, mid-level tube amps use pentode tubes while triodes are used in the incredibly overpriced tube amps. In accordance with this bit of audiophile woo, that Wavac amp uses a single, very large triode as its output tube.

By the way, here's a link to the specs and price for the Wavac amp:

http://www.stereophile.com/tubepoweramps/704wavac/index3.html

According to the article, they cost $350,000 a pair. Here's a link to an article that has some pictures of this amp:

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue9/wavac833.htm

At least it looks cool.

[WildCat]

AND.... I once had a coworker who only bought gold-plated CDs, claiming that they sounded better. I asked him what part of gold plating made those ones and zeros sound better? But it was futile......
Some record companies came out w/ "gold" cd's, and they did sound better, but not because of the material. When cds first came out there was a rush to get them out quickly, and many older recordings (from the final mix-down meant for vinyl, not from the original multi-track) were simply run through a A/D converter and put on cd. They often sounded like crap, and so as the time crunch eased and technology got better some were remastered again (from the original multi-track recordings) specifically for cd - the "gold" cds. At a premium price, of course.

[Ducky]

The tubes vs. transistors debate goes back a long time. I have some old electronics magazines from the early 60's and there were a few articles on the subject. The way I see it, the early solid-state amps were a new technology trying to compete with a very mature technology. For example, one problem was the germanium power transistors that were used at the time. Germanium is not stable with respect to temperature which caused them to draw more current when they heated up. The extra current draw makes them heat up more, which causes even more current flow. This is called thermal runaway and some of the early amp makers did not know how to design around it.

Anyway, the general crappiness of early solid-state amps gave them the poor reputation they have today. In the guitar world, the Fender company came out with a full line of solid-state amps but they were so terrible they lasted only one year. These amps are rare but even collectors don't want them. These days, Fender sells mostly solid-state amps but their top-of-the-line amps are all tube.

Even in the tube world, there is a debate between triode vs. power pentode tubes (6L6, 6V6, etc.). When the pentodes came along in the 30's, they didn't sound the same as the earlier triodes. It turns out the pentode tubes have a much higher output impedance so the amps sounded differently. Once again, the early designers didn't know how to deal with the 'new' technology and the pentodes recieved a poor reputation that remains to this day. Even now, mid-level tube amps use pentode tubes while triodes are used in the incredibly overpriced tube amps. In accordance with this bit of audiophile woo, that Wavac amp uses a single, very large triode as its output tube.

By the way, here's a link to the specs and price for the Wavac amp:

http://www.stereophile.com/tubepoweramps/704wavac/index3.html

According to the article, they cost $350,000 a pair. Here's a link to an article that has some pictures of this amp:

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue9/wavac833.htm

At least it looks cool.


A quick aside on the tubes vs. transistors thing.

I have several amps and preamps etc. for my guitar work, but the main staple of what I do uses a Sansamp PSA-1. The sansnamp has no DSP and I generally prefer to record without any effects and add them in the post. This unit is a solid state preamp, and sounds as good in my opinion (with some slight eq tweaking) as my Mesa Triaxis - an all tube preamp.

I used to run a couple of Line 6 Pod Pro's, and found them lacking in clean tone, and the distortions sounded strange ot me, so I avoided them. A few days ago I tried the line 6 software plugin for ProTools and got some very workable tones that sounded great in the mix. I started out 15 years ago convinced that only a tube amp could get great tone for guitar, then moved into the solid state realm, and now find myself using software plugins for some guitar tones. In fact, the Roland V-Drum series has become very interesting as it progresses to very very realistic drum sounds. I would challenge anyone to pick out the actual recording of a grand piano or hammond b3 against my Native INstruments digital instruments.

IT seems what you said about the learning curve for new technology is correct, because unfortunately the rate at which the designers learn to use the new tech effectively and the rate at which musicians or audiophiles accept it is vastly different.

As far as I am concerned tube, solid state, and digital all have come into their own (though I think the digital has a ways to go to completely capture some distorted tones) and are all very viable. I am still amazed however, at the lack of willingness of guitarists to use a preamp direct to the board on stage to cut back on stage noise. Apparently loss of hearing and giving the sound engineer fits with unruly stage noise is not a good enough reason to adapt from monsterous multi-speaker-cab amps.

[Terry]

pardon?

[Paulhoff]

We need a governor or a president, Terry wants a pardon. :D

Paul

:) :) :)

[Schneibster]

Fowlsound and bjb, I agree whole-heartedly with your analyses. I am also a guitar player, and I use a mix of digital and transistor, for both clean and dirty sounds, in that application; I rarely can find a difference between that and tube that is worth the rather extreme cost associated with tube-based products. If I had endless money, I'd buy several tube amps, and I might well look into a sansamp; as it is, since music is not a profession but a hobby, I simply can't justify it.

As far as sound reproduction goes, I am solidly in the transistor camp; the specs of most Lin topology transistor amps are so good these days that there is little reason to choose more expensive and less performant tube-based designs. The best of the tube-based designs merely create sounds in which the defects all militate toward desirable (as opposed to undesirable) types of distortion; is it not better to simply avoid distortion altogether as much as possible? It is to my mind.

[Paulhoff]

To bad JJ seems to have given up this Forum. :(

Paul

:) :) :)

[Disco]

According to the article, they cost $350,000 a pair. Here's a link to an article that has some pictures of this amp:

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue9/wavac833.htm

At least it looks cool.

Yep, they're pricey - but that doesn't stop some people from buying them.

That link is a little old, since tmh audio doesn't handle Wavac anymore. Thanks for letting me know!

MHB

[Topspy]

Oh please, in the everyday world it doesn't. :rolleyes:

Paul

:) :) :)

I think that was my point.