Do DC power cables make a difference ?
Having just acquired a new DC cable from Mark at Item Audio my answer is an unequivocal yes. Not earth shattering but a definitive improvement and definitely worthwhile for £20 or so.
Audible improvements in low level detail and bass and more dynamics with a forward projection of the soundstage. Stereo is tighter and separation marginally iimproved. In all just a better more focused sound that just adds to the music.
For all you guys with Youngs/Evas I would suggest you try out a cable betwixt power supply and unit - you might be surprised !
Audible improvements in low level detail and bass and more dynamics with a forward projection of the soundstage. Stereo is tighter and separation marginally iimproved. In all just a better more focused sound that just adds to the music.
For all you guys with Youngs/Evas I would suggest you try out a cable betwixt power supply and unit - you might be surprised !
Comments
As for the DAC, it might be worth a try I suppose, but I think I recall reading that Marco used an unusual twin pin plug on the end of the Young cable.
http://thelondonbakeoffshow.110mb.com/index.php?p=1_5_Cables-and-mains-room
Although, I didn't have the time at the show to decide which differences I preferred.
I've never experimented with DC cables.
Why is short better Simon ?
Thanks
Bill
Some Interesting points of view and points of information being clearly stated fellas.
Please make every effort to keep things civil while making them.
:-)
I am entirely at ease with the point you are making. And, I think your post as a whole continues to make your point very clearly without the deleted sentence.
The mod's here are keen that we should have lively and respectful debate on audiochews. Thankfully, you and others are making the debate lively. I and the mod's will continue to do the minimum necessary to keep things respectful.
Ben
Simon
I assume you have tried Mark's cables and are therefore in a position to comment on this specific item ?
My lugholes do not 'fantastical nonsense' - except when on copious amounts of vino rosso !!
Never say never, eh?
This particular cable we have tried (and kept) is cryo treated and has ferrites on it, but there is no consensus on what actually causes the improvements. Simon has posted that the 'ferrets' are the only relevant issue here, I have no real knowledge with which to challenge that assertion.
Actually I don't feel a need to challenge it either - I suppose I don't really mind that I don't understand a lot of hifi stuff anymore. I do hear the difference though.
For whatever reason these little cables do sound pretty fine (only about £20).
Great sentiment Al, I for one will not be pooh-poohing anyone's gear that they have carefully auditioned & selected.
I do understand the backlash against these 'leftfield' audio products & treatments though, as there seem to be some quite extra-ordinary claims made for what appears to be rubbish.... The UK HiFi forum collective as a whole seems to pretty militant in it's "Foo-Bashing" counter-arguments, but it appears many feel they have been ripped off & mislead over the years and are pretty resentful.
Which in a perverse way underscores the point you are making - if you can hear it & you like it - buy it.
If, on the the other hand, you don't hear it, don't buy it because someone else says it's good. Perhaps that is the root of the problem.
All opinions are respected here on AudioChews.
SQ225917,
Howdy, my first post on this forum. I just found it in searching for some reviews on some item or another and stumbled onto this thread. This is an hilarious topic with many different versions of what I see as just 2 viewpoints:
a) They make a difference
b) They do not make a difference.
If you are truly bored one day, and I mean truly bored then there is circa 200 pages worth of reading on DTV forum regarding whether power cables make a difference. Blind testing was offered to be done by some folks in Perth (Oz) which was done to the satisfaction of the participants. They found a readily identifiable difference. However, the testing methodology was then pooh poohed by the ones that claim that the cables cannot make a difference. I am of a similar view to a number of folks here who seem to work on the basis that 'if I can hear a repeatable difference then that is good enough for me'.
My background is electronics engineering and I do quite a bit in cable development these days - Digital, Analog, and have been playing with power cables both DC and AC.
The standard argument pulled out is that if the power supply is properly designed then a power cable cannot make any difference. 'Properly designed' is a really interesting and really subjective term. Properly designed to measure the best or properly designed to sound the best???. I find that these often do not go hand-in-hand. This comment is based mostly on the basis of power suppies for tube ccts. A supply with massive filtering and regulation should in theory be best. I find they tend to sound somewhat clinical, hifi and boring. Softer supplies (less regulated or totally unregulated) seem to create a better sense of musical engagment. Does this not then open up such a supply to the vagaries of the mains feeding it and possible influence from power cables? Which is properly designed?? To me, the better sounding one is although many of my engineering brethren would disagree.
You make comment in an earlier post "but just swapping one length of copper for another with plugs at both ends for another- nope no way, no how."
I would propose that this is an extremely oversimplified comment. It does not take into account the dielectric materials used (eg teflon vs pe), the geometry (plaited, twisted, parallel) or the form of the copper (solid, stranded, round solid, ribbon solid etc etc) and these factors all from my R&D have sonic influence when applied to power cables, both AC and DC, interconnects, speaker cables etc.
As an example we built several power cables to supply 63mA to a customised clock on a transport. Said cables were connecting a 400 A/H Lead Acid battery to the clock. Overkill as a power supply?? As it turns out no. All cables were 14AWG in cross-sectional area but with varying dielectric material and copper form ie single solid conductor, stranded, flat etc. Blind testing was performed comparing these cables to ascertain the subjective best. Differences were clearly audible to both testers who swapped role as being cable swapper and listener and the same end-point was achieved by both.
Same connection at both ends, same cross-section of copper, so we were effectively "just swapping one length of copper for another" and clearly auible BLIND tested result. Go figure.
And this was just a DC supply to a clock on a transport. Try changing the AC cable from the power conditioner to the same transport. Also a very interesting experience.
Did just the same little test with a colleague a couple of weeks ago changing the power supply to phono stage from a dedicated 32A wallpoint to the power conditioner. Wow, what a difference. Changed the actual power cable, Wow what a difference. Did the same style of comparison with a friend of a friend 2 weekends ago (He is an Electrician) and he looked at me as if I had grown a second head and stated "that is not possible; that cannot be possible but I can clearly hear it". Did the power cable change on the phono stage, a NOS DAC, the transport and he could clearly differentiate and articulate the differences he was hearing. Again, go figure.
WRT your suggestion of recording and nulling the two different setups, one of these days I may try this out for fun. The implicit assumption is that the equipment doing the recording and digitising has at least as good or better resolution than the rest of the rig or it just may not be able to represent the potentially subtle changes that may occur. I question whether this is the case. If it were the case then most of the argument re different DACS would become moot. After all, you are a vinyl man from what I see. Something gets lost most often in the digitisation process it seems to me. This be the subtleties of music like engagement, soundstaging, imaging and 'thereness'.
I have to agree with BHOBBA that this topic of conversation never seems to go anywhere positive. Kinda like tubes vs SS, active vs passive etc
But there ya have my 2 bobs worth anyway.
Cheers all
Rawl
sq225917
Thanks for your interesting response. To answer a couple of your questions:
Yes the connections were soldered at the clock and clamped at the battery. If you 'look no further than the solder joint' then I take it you think I am unable to solder very well. Interesting that back and forth testing showed consistent outcome with 2 independent listeners. Statistically pretty tricky for me to bugger the solder joint for a particular cable in the same way several times in a row.
Did not measure RLC... didn't care. I would be most appreciative if you could share yor viewpoint as to what the absolute values of R,L,C and the relative ratios should be for this application of power cable to the clock. I have no idea so measurements would not have helped me very much. Maybe useful to correlate the listening results with the measurements but did not do this. Maybe next time.
I did not in any way change the power supply itself for the phono stage. Only changed the 240 volt power feed from being plugged into a dedicated 32A wall point to being plugged into a power conditioner and then changed just the mains power cable supplying the phonostage whilst leaving it connected to the power conditioner. Then did the same (swapped power cables) but connected to the 32A wallpt (ie no filtering). Significant audible difference in each of these iterations.
I am truly surprised that you are unable to hear a change when comparing these very significantly diferent power cables.
Cheers
Rawl
thought i would throw in my 2p's worth,
i have read much debate on the subject of cables ,supports ,etc, now i use some very budget gear at the moment but have owned and enjoyed some rather nice gear too, i try to keep an open mind , but,, every system i have used in the past 15 or so years has benefited from having some care taken over the choice of power cable , speaker cable and interconnects and also what was supporting the equipment, i am as i have always been a little sceptical over such things and at several points in those past years(too many!) friends have also enjoyed my system and have asked , "does all that nonsense actually make a difference?" rather than try to convince them i simply fitted all the supplied cables that came with the equipment and stacked it all on the concrete floor of my listening room and played the same music again, 100% of the times i have done this they have been dumb founded, all those friends of mine now have carefully selected cables and have experimented with supports etc, each of those cables or supports bring a little bit of improvement that on their own seem to offer very little , but all of them together bring a rather substantial improvement, when they are all removed in one go the system sounds broken by comparison,
all the measurement is very important of course but all those people in the past that did the all the testing and measuring to bring us what we have now didnt just accept the measurements as they knew there was more going on and kept pushing the boundaries of what was currently known ,
lets not forget that most advances in audio reproduction happened first from being inquisitive then we learned to measure the improvements,
so, keep trying and investigating , you never know ,you just might discover the next real advance in audio!!
all the best,
matt
A blind test has been conducted at my house and the person tested could hear a difference in power cables
On the other side of the country (australia) another blind test has been done and other people could also hear a difference in power cables
below a link to the thread
http://www.dtvforum.info/index.php?showtopic=92538
Just because some people can't hear a difference doesn't mean others can't.
some peoples hearing is not as acute as others all this talk about engineers with degrees yet sound engineers still produce bad recording maybe they should measure less and listen more us music lovers do.
I really dislike the blind leading others into total darkness in this crazy hobby.
Enjoy your journey
Mod' comment:
There are obviously some strongly held opinions contributing to good healthy discussion in this thread. Thanks to all contributors. I'm following the thread with interest.
But the underlines and bold are unnecessary and may inflame feelings. Let's keep the emotional aspects of the debate damped down as far as possible. :-)
Cheers.
As the instigator of this thread I feel obliged to contribute merely to say that the old subjectivist v's objectivist debate still prevails.
Therotically perhaps DC cables should not make a diffference but to some ears in the real world it does.
C'est la hif-fi !!!
Please stay IN the discussion. I'd be fascinated to take you up on such an offer. I'm genuinely curious.
I've never been clever enough to understand the physics behind electronics. Obviously that doesn't get in the way of my enjoying recorded music via the subjectivist route, but i've always been curious to try to learn or understand. :-)
Where are you?
But what do you believe is the percentage of that figure? 100%? 50%? 1%?
Is the objectivist v subjectivist Hifi civil war an all or nothing conflict, or is an uneasy truce possible?
Conflict of opinion, even experience, is a good thing! I would no more expect Rob to be convinced by my eulogising over a DC cable than I am over statements of fact that however correct, seem to miss something.
Stick around Rob please, and help educate this pleb (-me, that is!). I won't promise conversion, any more than you'd expect it, but I am agreeable to having my horizons broadened.
Funny that if a power cable makes a difference in sound it means badly designed kit seems to come from the measuring brigade 99.99% of the time on the audio forums world wide.
anyway people have fun with audio and enjoy your journey
g'day from australia