Power Cord Burn-In

Flex. I agree with you to some extent. But, a "power cable" changing the sound of a component after it breaks in?

The answer, Scottht, is YES. I did blind tests on my Jolida JD-100A with three different PC's, and all three people listening agreed that while one of the cords was more open than another, a third (a Michael Wolff carbon PC) made everything sound live and three-dimensional. In fact, my wife guessed that the most lifeless of the three must be the Wolff, because we had just received it, and she figured that "it must need breaking in." She was quite surprised to find out that it was in fact only two hours old. Now three weeks later, it sounds better yet.

I will say that after hundreds of hours recording and producing music, I have a pretty trained ear for slight variations in sound. And yet, the differences with the Wolff cord were not marginal. It was dramatically better than the others. I have affiliation with Michael Wolff, other than as a grateful audiophile whose expectations for his audio system were expanded by his products.

Scottht,

I should mention the three cords we tested, as I noticed that you have one of them in your system:

Signal
Van Den Hul
Michael Wolff

A large variance in price, and equally so in performance.
All the best,
Howard

Flex,

The quoted portion of my previous post is an ANALOGY.

It's not meant as any type of proof - it's just an analogy.

You're pushing an analogy to an absurd degree. Of course
it is well recognized that humans are much better at
"pattern recognition" than current computer algorithms.

However, this is a non sequitur when it comes to how electrons
flow in cables - and the computational physics that can
currently be used to model such to a high degree of accuracy.

Gregory Greenman

Dear Morb,
It's also a non-sequitur to discuss the JFK Jr problem, call it "fallible senses vs instrumenation", and then use that as a proof of the limits of hearing. In fact, your comparisons are apples-oranges.

You were comparing an optical sensor (eye) with, what, EM radiation sensors(?) under conditions where the optical sensor is severely disadvantaged. Had you compared optical to optical (e.g. eye to camera, telescope) you would have discovered that the instrumentation was no better than the eye under those fogged in conditions.

My point was to say that human sensory detection uses a wide variety of criteria in arriving at conclusions, and is subject to a high degree of training (yes, pattern recognition). Agreed, it has nothing to do with electron flow, and neither does your commentary. But my point actually does have a great deal to do with why audiophiles, as well as audio professionals, become skilled in hearing fine differences, and also with a discussion on the fallibilities of double blind tests. Lets not get into blind testing here; it's a long and heated argument.

It's a necessary and good exercise to look at audio "theories" in terms of well-established scientific knowledge, like phase diagrams and electron flow. But it's also a little dangerous to always infer from the text book situation to the engineering situation; the devil is in the details, and human ears need to be trusted at times to tell you that you haven't always got the explanation right.