Let us be very specific here. We were talking about power cords, and that is what I was referring to. Nothing else.
If you find that power cords do make a difference, I am quite happy. For myself, all I was trying to do was to find some rationale behind why they make a difference. I am sure I will find it somewhere.
Cheers
Hopefully my last post before I catch tonight's flight...
Just some specific information for you to ponder about (sources: interviews with Bill Low of Audioquest, Garth Powell of Furman Sound etc):
In the beginning, every cable manufacturer specified "high purity" copper for cables, whether interconnects, speaker cables or power cords. Then came something called OFC or OFHC (oxygen free high conductivity copper) which sounded significantly different. It also turned out that there was as much difference among different OFHC suppliers as there is between normal electrical grade copper and OFHC. In our world, the differences in conductivity is absolutely irrelevant but the difference in audio performance are important. Then in 1985 Hitachi introduced LC-OFC, a long grain copper called "Linear Crystal". Van den Hul introduced similar concept with their mono crystal cables around the same time. Then in 1987 cable manufacturers started using copper cast according to Prof Ono's continuous casting process and the result was with grains of copper averaging 200 feet in length instead of the huge number of grains per inch in even the best OFHC coppers. Nippon Mining then came out with their stress-free 6N copper. It goes on...
Then there is the skin effect and other such attributes in the design of a cable.
There is little flow of current in interconnects and lots of current flow with speaker cables and power cords. Additionally, power cords conduct only a single frequency. So the design of each cable is different. As an interconnect cable essentially carries information rather than power and therefore, what matters is bandwidth, most of its detrimental effects can be heard in the first inch of the cable. On the other hand, a speaker cable goes wrong with regard to both inductance and magnetic field interaction problems and that is why longer cables sound more and more out of focus, no matter how good its design and materials are.
Power cables are a subset of speaker cables where it is not that important to reduce distortion. Conductor geometry, material quality etc are as important as speaker cables and to eliminate power related distortions, the designer looks into stranded vs solid conductors, insulation etc to control and stabilise the interaction of large magnetic fields.
As audio equipment like amplifiers need lots of power from the wall socket without introducing noise, distortion etc, a well designed power cord matters. Similarly for a source like CD player, it is equally important as the signal originates there and whatever follows will be replicas of this signal and shielding becomes important. So, if it is trash, the rest is trash. What do they say, GIGO?
Scientific proofs, yes, it is a subject of controversy in this field, especially with websites like audioholics sprouting up, heavily biased against established manufacturers and dubbing snake-oil theories. Or, may be another genleman pasting a photo of opening a can or worms. It is always nice and easy to question rather than seek answers. I don't believe that anyone searches for theoretical scientific proofs every time for whatever one does. Even a reputed magazine like Hifi Choice of UK have openly admitted that they also are looking for such proofs for power cables in spite of agreeing that they do make a noticeable difference in systems where even a tiny improvement or distortion can be observed.
Thanks for your patient reading. Good luck and good-bye.
regards.
murali
