Im not familiar with this model, but Im relatively confident that 15,000.00 is a bit much to be spending on anything audio-related unless youre setting up a concert in a stadium! The engineers of most any power supply - and I know a mess of them - would beg to differ. But one did *seem* to alter the sound of my system. These are far less well defined. Rather than have me try to explain all the subtleties of this, I suggest you consult Ott's and Morrison's books as two well regarded references on these subjects. And, per RH's point, nothing Shunyata has ever published shows its impact on noise - post-power-supply - in the audio chain. "Many components use a power inlet IEC that has an integrated "L" or "pi" filter. Power connections also are conduction paths for common mode noise currents. A power supply cleans all of this up. Which is a straw man characterization. If there's a third possibility, please tell me. Do power cables make a difference to sound quality? Its easier than it sounds, and not only will it give us all a chance to finally settle this thing, once and for all, but it will give YOU the opportunity youve always wanted to be a golden-eared reviewer with an appreciative world-wide audience. By Luis August 25, 2022 --> It's a well-known fact among audiophiles that the power cables connecting your components can make a big difference in the overall sound quality of your system. Some even insert capacitors within the cable to further increase capacitance. Excluded are . Which is of course why Shunyata wants to show you measurements sometimes. Do they? Head to https://squarespace.com/cheapaudioman to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code cheapaudiomanAudioquest NRG-Z3 https://ho. Subwoofer cables - Big difference or rip-off? | Audioholics Home Look at the yellow trace, fourth from the top, and compare the top image (before) with the bottom image (after the application of Shunyata's noise reduction). Yes, and someone who is very tired of reading certain types of hogwash online. So why don't we see evidence of people being able to detect this in blind testing? You can find a ton of information on the topic with regard to electronic instrumentation, but good luck trying to find any with regard to audio. As far as we, or anybody we have asked know, there is nothing harmful about using it."? We used a loopback on an audio interface in order to measure the response, so theres no measurement data that could have been altered or affected by the room. Intuitively, you might think that a small wire would sound thin in the bass region. Your comment seems to be based on a very common misconception about sighted bias. While its possible that some cables will alter the sound in minor ways (usually due to cable length), thats not a good thing: it means that the cable is falling short somewhere. It's just how human beings work. Once again, lack of supporting evidence is just that. The distance is quite small, on the order of a couple of feet to several feet. It just does for a lot of people. It's almost impossible to design a power supply that is so poor that it *doesn't* already do what these filtering cables do. Seems straightforward enough: the TS cable can be used on a line-output and a powered output, and the stereo cable would work on a set of speakers I have lying around. Written by Roger Skoff April 3, 2014 Then, the accumulated observational data is "smoothed" into what is called an opinion. As stated in #1 the local current and electromagnetic effects directly affect the sonic . Capacitance, attenuation, velocity of propagation or impedance metrics would give nothing away to their competitors but a metric by which a customer can verify that the product delivers what promises. Remember, the phenomena they point to as the problem aren't magic - they are measurable phenomena which is why they purport to "know" what is causing unwanted artifacts in the first place! Although capacitance is of a bigger concern for data and not so much for audio, you can somewhat correlate the conductor's quality to capacitance. In order to see if those deviations came from the room or the cable, lets look at measurements from a mono-channel TS cable versus our coathanger cable. But it's entirely sensible to recognize the variables involved, in trying to tease out reliable conclusions. Power supplies are designed and tested for this, and it's electrical engineering 101. Heres a very simple experiment that anyone can do at home that should prove to most peoples satisfaction whether cables actually influence the sound of a system and whether or not factors other than just resistance, capacitance, and inductance can influence the sound of a cable. And if you think no one has tested various claims made for various cables (and DACs) etc then you need to visit sites like Archimego's Musings (where he often tests claims via measurements), Audio Science Review, Hydrogen Audio. I merely pointed out that I haven't seen good evidence - the type of evidence one should expect to be available if the claim is true. We sampled the Audioquest Dragon Source and compared it to the Audioquest NRG-1000 and a (d. Do "High End" Power Cables Make a Difference - Home Theater Forum and 5:30 am I assume you didn't hear lower noise floors, etc., with current capabilities being the same. Can you give a link to Shunyata proving AUDIBLE NOISE has been removed from an audio system? I just find it ironic that a company is actually making the effort to explore actual objective measurements, and everybody just screams how that can't matter anyway. Misconception #3: There is up to a hundred feet of wire in the walls, so the last 6 feet of power cord can't possibly make any difference. I believe audiophiles and music lovers should just be reasonable and follow straight forward electrical principles (here's a 10' 14AWG Monoprice for example, or a 6' 14AWG Pangea Audio for a few bucks more), turn up the BS detector when you see the ads of 4-figure power cables claiming apparent sonic improvements. Surely, if power cables make a clearly audible difference, these two wires should be literally worlds apart in terms of quality and should also easily show differences. You don't need to spend the gawd-knows-how-much-they-are-asking amount for the Shunyata cable to get the current benefits they attribute to their special cables. Affiliate links on SoundGuys may earn us a commission. And, most certainly, an awful lot of the explanations are plain hogwash. Shunyata @106pf/m, whereas a cable from the hardware store measures 102pf/m. Once youve got your cables, if they are like lampcord or zipcord a one-piece pair, held together for most of their length by a thin plastic joiner, CUT that joiner along its full length so that you wind up with two separate cables. Editors note: 1dB is significant here as it is considered the just noticeable difference threshold for the same frequency sounds (in normal listening volumes) when other sound isnt present. Kinda wordy, but I hope that answers your question. 2. To start, first find a set of the freebie interconnect cables that many manufacturers of cheap electronics include in the package when you buy their equipment. Wow, I didn't realize they revealed that in the signal. But like washing water with other water. As stated in #1 the local current and electromagnetic effects directly affect the sonic performance of the component. This doesn't mean of course we should all turn our fun hobby in to a science demo every time we want to buy something new. (Apologies for the poor image quality.) Do power cables make a difference to sound quality? What do you think happens during a hearing test? Ideally, measurement techniques should be used to focus in on the noise floor. That's the way we are, a minefield of cognitive errors and biases. Carefully take the jacket off each of your two cables, IN ONE PIECE. Today, we're going to try to prove one way or another whether or not high-end cables make a difference for your equipment. "Shielding can be a two-edged sword. On the other hand, the shielding may induce re-radiated fields onto the cable or component that it is being used in. OnSoundGuys, the both sound the same option won every single poll question handily. What needs to be stated plainly here is that the only thing this experiment demonstrated was that the use of cablesof the correct specifications should not be audibly any different than each other. (Its still being studied, from what I can tell.). On a personal note I would like to say that I was an audiophile long before I was a manufacturer of audio products. We usedFLAC music files (24-bit, 96kHz) to put these cables to the test, and still: no change. This is why skepticism remains reasonable. Coils and chokes are necessary in most components and I prefer "single layer wound" types such as the foil designs. Power = Current x Resistance = 5.9 x 8 = 34.81 x 8 = 279 sustained watts of power. Which means the audible change I perceived was true. When you have finished that, VERY CAREFULLY make a single long straight cut on each cable, running from the circular cut at one end of the cable to the circular cut at the other end of the same cable. The short answer: yes it will make a difference. This implies that we need some sort of power conditioner or filter to protect the equipment. Especially common mode noise currents. (Horrors!). I do that in my job. 3. Aside from my wife, who is a musician and gets an emotional rush from reading sheet music (not a lot of help), I don't need to impress anybody else. Audio Power Cables / Cords - Do they really make a difference? To put it in more technical terms, it's in parallel with the measuring device. "A speaker cable conducts an audio signal from the power amplifier to the speaker. This is where aftermarket power chords make bigger differences. If you need a cable like this, it means that the engineers who designed your products were not worthy of the title. And if you measured some area of brain function, how could you correlate it to experience without having categorized subjective reports from subjects to make the correlation???? You're basically taking the opinions of a bunch of people and molding them into scientific truth. You should make a TOTAL OF FOUR of these circular cuts one near each end of each of the two cables. But, generally their view of flaws in electronic systems are pretty simplistic and focus on first order effects. Chances are near 100% if they meet your systems requirements, theyll be functionally perfect, so dont overthink it. Lack of supporting evidence does not mean that something does not exist. There are two aspects to power transmission: the electromagnetic wave and the current flow. "Most of what I have to say here are my "conclusions" based upon observation through trial and error testing. The transition between the various metals used in a power cable and its connectors can cause electromagnetic reflections and diode-like rectification of the noise impulses as they propagate away from the power supply. We have yet to find a component that cannot be improved by replacing the power cord. Please point me to a published test of an amplification or source component's noise floor where: 1. But at the same time, if we really want to warrant confidence in certain claims, we can't pretend our biases are magically exempt just in our pet hobbies. Sheer conjecture and probably wishful thinking. Yes. Looks like the deviation in our last chart came from the room. JRW Publishing Company, 2021 The notion theyre trying to sell is that spending more on a premium component will somehow improve the performance on your stereo setup by adding a more valuable part. DO THAT. Notice that the other end of the noise-absorbing cordthe IEC endisn't connected to anything; it's just dangling. "Our tests with coils and chokes indicate that (in general, with exceptions) that any coil or choke that is placed in-line with the power circuit is harmful to dynamics. If it's measurablewell..there it is! Then you suggest that maybe the lack of measurable results is due to the fact it's too hard to measure those results. That and correlation of the noise to aural perception? The current itself cannot be contaminated but the electromagnetic wave can be modulated with other frequencies. When you are finished, you should be able (with your fingers or using a pair of longnose pliers) to pull each cables jacket off in one long continuous strip. After sanding the zinc off of the termination points and prepping the reference cable to be the exact same length as the coathanger cable, we were ready to go. January 4, 2023 We often harp on the fact that nobody needs audiophile-grade anything around these parts, but where we make our name is proving it. Others were a mixed bag. If Shunyata and other AC cable manufacturers claim that, no, they have identified measurable artifacts that power supplies aren't able to filter out and that cause a change in the audio signal, then they should be able to directly support that claim by showing how their AC cable measurably alters an audio signal produced by a sound system - a before and after using their cable vs a stock cable. In that light, Im going to be chucking the coathanger cables (rather than continue to use them) once this article is finished. Audio Power Cables / Cords - Do they really make a difference? We will let them address the issue if they desire. If it was so easy and conventional to measure, wouldn't you think that either side of the discussion would have done this long ago? (https://shunyata.com/videos/). Shielding of some sort is good or running the wire perpendicular to power lines (if some are near by). I come from a family of electrical engineers and learned all this growing up, first hand. We asked readers to listen to ten audio samplestwo head-to-head at a timeand rate which ones sounded better than others, or if they were the same. Saves money, time, product size and weight, and so on. On the third, the coathanger won again, but by a margin of 35.4% to 35%; hardly convincing, and very close to a normal distribution (aka, how a random number generator might vote). Yeah, thats a thing that happens; these results arenot friendly to our myth at all. Alas, they do not. Absolutely true. When Samuelson plugs a noise-absorbing power cord into a spare receptacle, the audible noise vanishes because that broadband electronic noise has been so dramatically reduced. Sub woofers (speakers too) operate at what are considered to be very low frequencies. "A power cable on the other hand is not transmitting a signal. We usually call these other frequencies noise or Electromagnetic Interference (EMI). Their AC cable producing measurable differences in the audio signal of a system. People happily used aspirin and its antecedents for more than two millennia before the mechanism was really studied or understood. Wire thats thick enough can satisfy the power requirements of the components (impedance issues), Passive speakers need a lot of juice to drive properly, and therefore any small attenuations from using imperfect conductors wouldnt make much of a difference, A cable made of coat hangers with TS terminations, A collection of oxygen-free copper (OFC) speaker cables, Coathangers stripped and prepped for use as a regular speaker wire, 122 listeners chose both sound equally as good (41.7%), 86 listeners preferred the coathanger (29.5%), 1,456 preferred the coathanger (45.5% with first comparison, 36.2% without), 1,049 preferred the cable (32.8% with first comparison, 37.7% without), 694 chose both are the same (21.7% with first comparison, 26.1% without). Personally I like the idea of tweaking my system to higher performance like any other audiophile. Absolutely not. Of course, cables with the wrong connection type wont work out so well. Do Audiophile Cables and Power Conditioners make a Difference? If so, is the measurable artifact in question *audible* (because measuring equipment can measure many things beyond the capabilities of our own senses - that's one reason why we invent measuring equipment). Do we just imagine ourselves exempt from the contamination of bias effects in our hobby? Ideally the tone(s) should be generated by a representative audio source component, not a test generator . Should we find a difference there, well then use the single-channel guitar cable and coathanger version to measure the line-level output to see if its really the cable, or something else thats causing the deviations (Ed. Do Audiophile Power Cables Make A Difference? - YouTube Some leads are of flimsy construction, and may reduce the available power for sustained loud passages, however, the difference will rarely exceed 1dB in most cases. Then write in and tell us all what you heard. Do Power Cables Make a Difference? The Results Surprised Me - YouTube As best I can tell, very few - maybe no - manufacturers of audio equipment ever measure the effects of these noise currents on audio systems using their equipment. I learned today that Shunyata has an expanding presence in the medical industry; It's actually a sister company, Clear Image Scientific. In other words, if you don't trust your manufacturer's power supply design in the first place, then why do you want to own the equipment you chose? Plugs are VERY important as regular of the shelf are usually very rough, and each dimple and peak in the plug radiate and receive noise. The component's power supply is within a complex network of wires and connectors. Because no cable beat the null hypothesis that both cables sounded equally as good, were confident in asserting that theres something to that idea. Do power cables make a difference? (By the way, conventional definitions of the word skepticism do not imply having an open mind going in. To be honest, cables potentially only can perform modest filtering functions compared to bulk filters. Thank goodness there is also a wide diversity of manufacturers that create products to serve a variety of tastes.. This is not a direct demonstration that Shunyata power cords improve the sound of your hi-fi; for that you'd need to visit the show yourself, or try these cords at home. Their accumulated observational data are then combined and "smoothed" into what is called a statistically significant result. The price is around $350.). marvda1 Posts: 4,533 November 2021 I know it's youtube but see if you can hear a difference. Everything is relative and the designer must weigh the sonic value of each part when designing a product. Justification: High end power cables have better connectors, shielded wire, and better wire (higher conductivity and flexibility). That probably describes most audiophiles, but they're not the ones you see writing all the opinionated posts. Once I did thatthe sound was indistinguishable between the two cords. Digital - CD and SACD Players and CD Transports, Headphones, Ear Speakers, In Ear Monitors, System Enhancements, Tuning and Maintenance. How would being able to measure noise on a power line "conflict with my belief system?" Not you, but somebody else who I probably should have addressed separately or specifically pointed to, then says: "RH: You are astute here. Do Hi-Fi Mains Cables Make a Difference? | Playbutton To account for possible room interference, weve applied 1/24th octave smoothing. This approach has some positives and many negatives including the reactive interference with the way many power supplies are designed. They don't make huge differences unless the factory cord is poorly constructed and picking up interference. That said, there's no serious debate that cables sometimes matter. This implies that once the water is contaminated at some point up stream, that is must be cleansed before it arrives at the audio component. After you have listened to everything, and believe that you are certain that you know what the System sounds-like set up that way, DOING NOTHING ELSE, AND MAKING NO OTHER CHANGES OF ANY KIND, PULL THE JACKETS OFF BOTH TEST CABLES AND LISTEN AGAIN, using exactly the same recordings played at exactly the same levels. But take a look at the image at the top of this post. Lack of supporting evidence does not mean that something does not exist. It is also proven in listening. Consequently, you should probably just stick with Monoprice, Mogami, or AmazonBasics for your audio cable needs if you dont care about how they look. That is one of the main purposes of a power supply! It is however powerful evidence that the Shunyata power cords are effective at reducing broadband noise in electrical circuits. Here's what the "test bench" looked like with the "Nasty Cable" plugged into the Emotiva amplifier: Notice that this testing took place in my basement right beside that fridge. Someone COULD be hearing a difference between cable A and B - that's not ruled out a priori. What really caught my attention though was a demo of one of the company's noise-absorbing cables, featuring Shunyata's Grant Samuelsen. Our idea wasnt disproven, and the only thing we definitively proved is consistent with the idea that high-end cables generally arent worth the staggering increase in cost by performance alone. I hypothesize that the power levels needed to transmit a signal to modern audio equipment far exceed the level where the difference in cables would matter, provided the gauge of the wire is sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the given system. That does not mean a condition or situation does or does not exist. Sometimes the cure may be worse than the illness. Turns out, the cables just do not make an audible difference. Sample noise appeared to be under 0.35dB. And of course the reason we have standards for producing competent cables, and power supplies etc is because they were developed through long histories of testing electrical theory! Decent power cords are a no brainer for your system IMO. Not like filtering water twice. I could be wrong, of course. Do power cables make a difference? Polk Audio Forum While you're here You might not be the right guy to ask, but I will anyway! Who's right? Againthat's why blind testing, placebo-controlled trials etc are used in many areas of scientific study. Guilty. But, don't you wonder why this is? If you dont have any or cant find them, any cheap set of interconnects will work just fine. Except I also took the further step most people don't bother with. Your amp could care less where the signal is coming from. First, lets look at the frequency responses measured from the speaker over each cable because this is going to have the noisiest data. For example, buying a more expensive cable will sometimes net you a lifetime warranty, reinforced terminations, or even being able to be bent (unlike rigid coathangers). The difference i don't know if its there as i don't have that audiophile ears ;-) For sure i know the power cable is super thick & shielded from noise which is important for an AVR & Power Amp. It's really easy and glib to just pat everybody on the head and tell them that what they observe is all in their head and not real. Do power supply units/cables make a difference in sound quality? if it comes in then it's in. Do power cables make a difference? - High End YETI Power cables VS After putting cheap heat shrink and electrical tape around each coat hanger, we connected the ends of the wires to the appropriate terminals on some loose 1/4 TS interconnects (the cheapest available on Mouser, of course) with some solder. I don't know what "belief system" you think I have, but I'm pretty sure you haven't got it right. True! It just means that it hasn't been satisfactorily proven or explained yet. Other times, you need 10 feet, but the device only came with 6. If they have identified measurable phenomena, claim to have fixed the problemit's obvious the results *should be measurable*. Is it time for science to give up on any investigations that rely on communication from a subject? If you do this correctly, AND CONTINUE TO BEND THE CABLE AS YOU CONTINUE TO CUT THE JACKET, the back (the non-cutting edge) of the blade will just slide along on the shield; the sharp cutting edge will sever the jacket without additional effort; and youll be able to make the long straight cut from one (circle cut) end of the cable to the other (circle cut) end of the cable quickly and easily, with no danger at all to either the shield or your fingers. That isn't a remotely complete account of how we can come to misattribute what we (think we) hear. Sometime back in the last decade, I purchased a Shunyata power cable from Music Direct, who was having an overstock sale. Speaker cables can (and sometimes do) sound different with a given amplifier and loudspeaker combination, even where they are well designed and of reasonable gauge. I'm channeling responses I've seen from electrical engineers and various technically knowledgeable people who I have seen take on the claim of Shunyata and other cable makers). What I find unfortunate about this is that people who fall for these demos are theoretically insulting themselves by insulting their choice of equipment. One problem I have with many high-end power cords is their weight and stiffness; it's common for IEC cords to pull out of the components they power due to their weight and stiffness--and power cords don't sound good when they're disconnected.
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