Why Power Cables Affect Sound


I just bought a new CD player and was underwhelmed with it compared to my cheaper, lower quality CD player. That’s when it hit me that my cheaper CD player is using an upgraded power cable. When I put an upgraded power cable on my new CD player, the sound was instantly transformed: the treble was tamed, the music was more dynamic and lifelike, and overall more musical. 

This got me thinking as to how in the world a power cable can affect sound. I want to hear all of your ideas. Here’s one of my ideas:

I have heard from many sources that a good power cable is made of multiple gauge conductors from large gauge to small gauge. The electrons in a power cable are like a train with each electron acting as a train car. When a treble note is played, for example, the small gauge wires can react quickly because that “train” has much less mass than a large gauge conductor. If you only had one large gauge conductor, you would need to accelerate a very large train for a small, quick treble note, and this leads to poor dynamics. A similar analogy might be water in a pipe. A small pipe can react much quicker to higher frequencies than a large pipe due to the decreased mass/momentum of the water in the pipe. 

That’s one of my ideas. Now I want to hear your thoughts and have a general discussion of why power cables matter. 

If you don’t think power cables matter at all, please refrain from derailing the conversation with antagonism. There a time and place for that but not in this thread please. 
128x128mkgus
Costco, you’re confused. Transistors are not analogous to signal propagation in wire. Why are you trying to cram words down my throat? You should have stayed in school like your mommy kept telling up.
Actually, I believe folks here are confusing photons with protons.  If you get photons in your cables, your least problem is sound quality.   Rather you have an arc happening inside the cable, which won't stay inside the cable for long.Signal and energy travels in the E and H fields on the wire, which are at right angles to one another. I think some folks were trying to state this in words of some sort.For more information on some of the aspects of why power lines can affect sound, see my other post: A problem with AC Power you may not have considered. 
mrdecibel,

So prof, it seems that you did not hear differences in the pcs you tried. If you did, or thought you did, you doubted yourself as a listener, and claim placedo effect. That is a problem right there,


I detailed the situation earlier in the thread. Did you read it?  In a nutshell, I did not perceive any obvious difference with a couple Shunyata power cables.  But in the most expensive (and biggest, thickest) one I was given, I thought I heard an obvious difference.  The system seemed to become more lush, darker, smoother.   It seemed so obvious I wondered if I actually liked my system with that cable in use. 


Then I had a friend help me blind test it against a cheap stock power cord.  In which case, all the sonic characteristics I felt so sure I'd heard disappeared and I couldn't for the life of me distinguish the sound from the cheap power cord.

In other words:  when I actually decided to just trust my ears, not my eyes, the high end cable didn't pass that test.

This is not surprising, if you know anything about the nature of how fallible our subjective inferences are. 


I have no problem admitting I'm human and fallible.   I feel that is actually being open minded, vs vs insisting that my subjective assessment just "absolutely, can not ever be wrong!"

You didn't answer my question:   Are you open minded to being wrong about what you believe you have heard in your system? 


 Are all of your buddies who loaned you cables, experiencing the placedo effect? Are you saying that everyone is experiencing the placedo effect, in this particular instance.



As I already stated: I am not claiming everyone here is just experiencing a bias or placebo effect.

But the method used by most audiophiles to test gear - with particular relevance to controversial tweaks - is not, unfortunately, well suited to distinguishing between bias effects and the real thing.

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