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<!-- #thumb --> <p>I had accidentally stumbled on something interesting in my development of a new preamplifier: a 14 gauge small diameter power cable didn’t sound as good as a larger diameter 12 gauge power cable. *In an easily repeatable experiment I could change the amount of body and fullness in the music by simply changing power cables.</p>
<p>This made no sense on a number of levels: the preamp was not drawing any appreciable power from the wall and what the heck difference would 6 feet of cable make when I was connecting to several hundred feet of exposed copper wire in the wall of my lab?</p>
<p>As I looked a little closer I also noticed that the 12 gauge power cable was shielded and the 14 gauge was not. *Hmmmm. *I got another smaller gauge cable to try, only this time it too was shielded. *Bingo, the fullness of the sound was the same but something else had changed: there was an increased openness to the sound that wasn’t there with the original unshielded small cable.</p>
<p>So wire gauge seemed to have something to do with the fullness – heavier wire gave a fuller sound – and shielding also affected the sound – it opened up the soundstage. *This was all very mysterious and hurt my head to contemplate what I was hearing because it flew in the face of anything making sense. *So I decided to try a little experiment.</p>
<p>I went down to the local hardware store and bought male and female AC plug ends so I could build my own cables. *I then purchased two lengths of 12 gauge, 3-conductor cables – one was a stranded type like that found in the power cables I was using, the other a solid core copper wire like what was in my wall – and built two unshielded power cables.</p>
<p>To my great surprise they sounded quite different again – the stranded 12 gauge cable lost some of the openness I had heard while the solid core cable had gained even more body and openness than the stranded. *I figured that the unshielded stranded version “made sense” but the solid core? *The solid core is what’s in the wall and essentially what I had done is put an added 6 feet onto my lab’s power line. *How could that do anything?</p>
<p>The only logic I could come up with is that adding the 6 feet of solid core did nothing to the sound – but adding 6 feet of stranded onto the hundreds of feet of solid core in the walls – somehow degraded the sound of my preamp.</p>
<p>My conclusion was that one wasn’t better than the other – but rather – one was worse than essentially nothing.</p>
<p>This all made my head hurt and I went home to have a beer.</p>
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[Source: http://www.pstracks.com/pauls-posts/head-hurt/11259/]
<p>This made no sense on a number of levels: the preamp was not drawing any appreciable power from the wall and what the heck difference would 6 feet of cable make when I was connecting to several hundred feet of exposed copper wire in the wall of my lab?</p>
<p>As I looked a little closer I also noticed that the 12 gauge power cable was shielded and the 14 gauge was not. *Hmmmm. *I got another smaller gauge cable to try, only this time it too was shielded. *Bingo, the fullness of the sound was the same but something else had changed: there was an increased openness to the sound that wasn’t there with the original unshielded small cable.</p>
<p>So wire gauge seemed to have something to do with the fullness – heavier wire gave a fuller sound – and shielding also affected the sound – it opened up the soundstage. *This was all very mysterious and hurt my head to contemplate what I was hearing because it flew in the face of anything making sense. *So I decided to try a little experiment.</p>
<p>I went down to the local hardware store and bought male and female AC plug ends so I could build my own cables. *I then purchased two lengths of 12 gauge, 3-conductor cables – one was a stranded type like that found in the power cables I was using, the other a solid core copper wire like what was in my wall – and built two unshielded power cables.</p>
<p>To my great surprise they sounded quite different again – the stranded 12 gauge cable lost some of the openness I had heard while the solid core cable had gained even more body and openness than the stranded. *I figured that the unshielded stranded version “made sense” but the solid core? *The solid core is what’s in the wall and essentially what I had done is put an added 6 feet onto my lab’s power line. *How could that do anything?</p>
<p>The only logic I could come up with is that adding the 6 feet of solid core did nothing to the sound – but adding 6 feet of stranded onto the hundreds of feet of solid core in the walls – somehow degraded the sound of my preamp.</p>
<p>My conclusion was that one wasn’t better than the other – but rather – one was worse than essentially nothing.</p>
<p>This all made my head hurt and I went home to have a beer.</p>
<center><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/pauls-posts/head-hurt/11259/emailpopup/" onclick="email_popup(this.href); return false;" title="Forward to a friend and help us engage more readers" rel="nofollow"><img class="WP-EmailIcon" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-email/images/email.gif" alt="email Makes my head hurt" title="Makes my head hurt" /></a>*<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/pauls-posts/head-hurt/11259/emailpopup/" onclick="email_popup(this.href); return false;" title="Forward to a friend and help us engage more readers" rel="nofollow">Forward to a friend and help us engage more readers</a></center><br /><!-- // MAILCHIMP SUBSCRIBE CODE --><center><a href="http://eepurl.com/eSzBY">Get new and fresh stories like this each morning by joining the folks reading Paul's Posts. Click here </a></center>
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[Source: http://www.pstracks.com/pauls-posts/head-hurt/11259/]