Anyone dumping their power conditiner?

Alpinist said:
Hi Eric,

You might want consider running an Omega XC power cord from the wall to your Everest like Mike does in his home system. That way you’ll experience the Omega/Everest synergy and can retain the Transparent power cords from your Everest out to your components. Just a thought.

Enjoy,
Ken
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Ken,

I agree with you. I ordered the XC also.

Eric
 
TheOctopus said:
You will still say that if we cannot measure a power cord, it still makes a difference. It is no different than the flat earth society claiming that no matter what evidence is presented, the earth is still flat. One group "hears" the difference and the other "sees" the flat horizon.

By the way, I worked in and invested into the industry where the greatest minds design equipment that treats and saves lives. That multi-million dollar diagnostic and treatment equipment is used all over the world.

At no point in any of the rational conversations with the engineers of these global leaders of medical equipment over the 20 years, have I ever heard any of them agree with my statements about power cords or cables in general. Yes, I have asked... :rolleyes: When one is buying equipment costing millions of dollars, a fancy power cord would be the least of their concerns if they improved anything.
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Well well well. You got pretty upset when I said that anyone that doesn't hear a difference with a power conditioner needs better hearing (obviously joking but somehow ruffled a lot of feathers here). But here you are, one-upping me, saying we are "flat earthers". And you're not kidding or joking.

That's fine, I can take it.

You do realize that Shunyata started a whole separate company to supply medical power conditioners and cables because they DID make a difference?!

Just be glad if you can't hear a difference. You'll save a lot of money that way.
 
2fastdriving said:
Well well well. You got pretty upset when I said that anyone that doesn't hear a difference with a power conditioner needs better hearing (obviously joking but somehow ruffled a lot of feathers here). But here you are, one-upping me, saying we are "flat earthers". And you're not kidding or joking.

That's fine, I can take it.

You do realize that Shunyata started a whole separate company to supply medical power conditioners and cables because they DID make a difference?!

Just be glad if you can't hear a difference. You'll save a lot of money that way.
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Yes, I am aware. Good luck to Shunyata, I hope they find success in their ventures.

Yes, in a sense we are flat earthers.

Like I said, our group relies on "hearing" that which is immeasurable in the face of evidence that certain things do not make a difference. The other group in the face of evidence that the earth is round relies on their eyes and that they see no curvature so the Earth is FLAT.

When both groups are presented with evidence that their assumptions are wrong through experimentation, there is a pause and a silence and then it all goes right back to business as usual. The evidence is presented in the form of double blind listening tests that reveal not only audiophiles but professional musicians, recording engineers and yes, the best ears of them all, the AUDIOPHILE is often just flat out wrong when participating in the blind experiments.

The Flat Earthers are also an enthusiastic group, they even go out and buy very expensive equipment to prove themselves wrong but they don't give up either. Since the eye does not lie and the zoom camera at 1000x still shows no curvature... well, the Earth is still FLAT.

I am an audiophile myself. I have no problem recognizing the difference in sound between different speakers, amplifiers, preamplifiers, certainly digital products and various designs of dacs and filters necessary in digital. I can relate to the difference between cartridges, tonearms, even tonearm cables since we are dealing with a very fragile signal that is much more sensitive to all the external electromagnetic interference. A shielded power cord near a tonearm cable will most likely be better than an unshielded power cord spewing electromagnetic radiation.

But forgive me if I subscribe to a power cord makes no difference camp. The power cord is not a signal carrying entity. It supplies current to the modulating circuitry as it requests it. The electrons come and they go through the power cord. Nothing else. What happens after the rectification and ripple smoothing, AC to DC converting power supply is beyond the business of a power cord that stops at the power supply receptacle...

Yes, I guess I am lucky. Do you honestly think that living literally within a nice cruise distance from The Cable Company I did not use their lending library over the past 30 years to try and figure these things out?
 
Adding Dragon Source power cords to my MSB Select DAC’s two power bases is the best sounding non-component upgrade I’ve made to my system. The difference in sound quality compared to the stock power cords I was originally using is stunning, so much more speed, detail and ease. Is this measurable? Most likely. Pure silver is a superior conductor to regular copper. Three individually insulated separate wires provide lower noise than three uninsulated wires in one cable.

Ken
 
TheOctopus said:
But forgive me if I subscribe to a power cord makes no difference camp. The power cord is not a signal carrying entity. It supplies current to the modulating circuitry as it requests it. The electrons come and they go through the power cord. Nothing else. What happens after the rectification and ripple smoothing, AC to DC converting power supply is beyond the business of a power cord that stops at the power supply receptacle...
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In SS electronics, a signal is never passed through in literal sense. From input stage to amplifying stage to buffer stage to output stage, a signal is recreated in each stage through its circuit’s power rails.
 
kzhtoo said:
In SS electronics, a signal is never passed through in literal sense. From input stage to amplifying stage to buffer stage to output stage, a signal is recreated in each stage through its circuit’s power rails.
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Having an electronics degree, I fully understand that. Thanks. Is there something I am missing about the power cord and power rails after the AC is converted, filtered and smoothed over by the power supply? Do we not have adequate capacitive storage for better transient response in audio amplifiers? How does a power cord affect the energy already stored in capacitors for the voltage rails?

The audio signal however is carried by interconnects. Interconnects can have an effect of the sound if they are specifically made to alter the sound/tone with unusual specs in capacitance, resistance or inductance.

Running over a hundred feet of standard grade microphone cable at a low signal level is not a problem for the recording industry so it is really not a problem for the audio system either. Let's not get ridiculous guys.
 
Understand that AC is met by the amplifier through its transformer. The electrons are traveling through the windings of the primary and back out the power cord. The voltage is "induced" through the core and secondary of the transformer. All this happens by magic we call electricity and transformer inductance. There is no way to prettify and beautify the induced voltage with a fancy, serpent named power cord... OK?

The power supply then takes the induced AC voltage and rectifies it to DC as well as filter and smooth the ripples over. Capacitors store the energy used by the voltage rails to amplify the incoming signal through the amplification stages/transistors that make the current flow through the speaker wires to speakers in an AC waveform. Some audio IC cables are even directional! Absurdity in itself when it is an alternating current but some audiophiles claim to hear a difference! Of course they should know better and the directional arrows on ICs point to the grounding plane which should be through the preamplifier.

trans65.gif
 
One of my wife's grandfathers was a "Flat Earther." When shown the ocean for the first time in his old age, he remarked, "Hmm, not as big as I though it'd be." Which, when you think about it, was him seeing his view of the ocean disappear over the horizon. I know that when I plugged in my first non-stock power cards, the impact on SQ was a definite, non-subtle improvement in SQ, especially clarity. I couldn't explain it, but I damn sure know what I heard. Confirmation bias or some such? I don't think so.
 
GSOphile said:
One of my wife's grandfathers was a "Flat Earther." When shown the ocean for the first time in his old age, he remarked, "Hmm, not as big as I though it'd be." Which, when you think about it, was him seeing his view of the ocean disappear over the horizon. I know that when I plugged in my first non-stock power cards, the impact on SQ was a definite, non-subtle improvement in SQ, especially clarity. I couldn't explain it, but I damn sure know what I heard. Confirmation bias or some such? I don't think so.
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And that is the million dollar question. Well, much. much, more than a million has been spent of power cords over the last 3 decades.

Much, much more than a million has been made by youtubers promoting the flat earth theory and their subscribers gladly eating it up. Psychologically it is a great feeling of belonging to an exclusive group that has the forbidden knowledge that we are being lied to by all the scientists in the world and NASA is at the forefront of that lie... The Earth is as flat as a pancake and some claim there is a dome. No such thing as gravity. It doesn't exist. There is no way we are hurtling through space somewhere on the outskirts of the Milky Way Galaxy at over 1,300,000,000 mph.. That can't be because we don't feel it!

One can draw their own parallels here.

I believe in the confirmation bias much more than I believe I have heard a difference in power cords over my own 3 decades of participating. Fancy ICs? Sure, I have played around, Purist, Nordost, Kimber, Cardas, Wireworld, Transparent, a lot of Transparent! I still use Transparent speaker cables and ICs but they have a network so they are essentially a grunge filter/tone control and I like it!

I also have a Shunyata power cord, it is well made and is well shielded. As such, I find it useful behind my rack where there are a whole bunch of ICs nearby. It doesn't make my system sound different because it dresses up the electrons for the musical parade but because it doesn't seem to spew electromagnetic radiation as much and polluting the nearby components and ICs.

I cannot after 30 years of this hobby in good conscience claim that I definitively heard a difference in cables or power cords but I can without a doubt say that I have also heard that which I "saw" with my eyes and was pre-biased to, with confirmation from other enthusiasts.

Notice how all the cables that are all the rage are simply always blowing the others away. They are always "better". We have invented a lot of adjectives for our descriptive writing but never stop to think what better actually implies. How does one cable make everything "better"? What is "better"? There is no standard or a gauge to go by.

In the end, I have no objection to any of the toys and tweaks. It is what I would call the "jewelry" of the audio world. It is no different than any other hobby where one takes a perfectly well designed and manufactured wheel and "upgrade" to a wheel made by an uncertain quality outfit because it "looks" better. Power conditioners/power cords are no different. If one thinks or even "knows" they hear a difference, so be it. It's your money, spend it as you see fit.
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TheOctopus said:
The audio signal however is carried by interconnects. Interconnects can have an effect of the sound if they are specifically made to alter the sound/tone with unusual specs in capacitance, resistance or inductance.
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Same for power. Given that these audio signals will have to be recreated in circuit stages through power rails.
 
Another visual example while I am at it. I have often thought of what a good example would be. Imagine that old water pump, pumping water from a well. That well is our 120V 60Hz AC household line. That old pump will keep pumping the electrons through your power cord at 60 "pumps" per second. Back and forth, back and forth.

From the power station, down the overhead or underground lines, to the pole transformer, stepped down drastically from the 155,000V to (765,000 volts high voltage lines) to a 240V split phase and in at 120V (114V-126V) AC line to your 120V receptacle.

Those electrons being pumped back and forth through the transformer primary are happy to share their joy through the MAGNETIC FIELD created by alternating current. There are no electrons flowing through the transformer... The electrons are going back to the pump at this point. The magnetic field induces current into the secondary winding of the transformer.

So as one can easily see, there power cord has nothing in common with the electric current that was induced though the transformer and is now happily stored in capacitors in DC to be used as the Voltage rails demands the "energy juice" from the "juice containers" called capacitors we have stored our magnetically induced energy in.

But I think that a video is always worth more than a thousand words? How does a Transformer work - Working Principle electrical engineering - YouTube
 
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