The interconnects or connectors on most cables are absolute crap. Most of the "gold" connectors are nothing more than gold colored lacquer or maybe some kind of tin plating. Underneath they are common pot steel, German steel, or pewter. I bet there is a lot of loss and low level ringing going on in cheap cables. You can't hear it though because the time for a signal to pass through 3' of cable is measured in nanoseconds (about 3.5ns) and is very high frequency noise. I'm sure some golden eared people will say they can hear delay and phase changes of nanoseconds at 50Ghz.
IIRC, @lrisbo of Purifi said that plated steel/iron banana jacks cause measurable distortion, which affected their speaker measurements. Lars has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and dozens of patents. I will trust him over wisecracks.
The guy at GR Research says that steel parts in the binding posts is a no-no and promotes copper "tube connectors" as the superior choice.
Some of the car stereos I installed in the early days used chassis ground as the negative conductor for the speakers. None of these systems were known for good sound. Once our shop could afford a spectrum analyzer we could show that speaker wires run across sheet metal would produce a high frequency rolloff just from inductance into the metal if the runs were long enough. In my own car I ran speaker wires through the center console and across the inside of the dash instead of under the carpet for this reason.
Some of the car stereos I installed in the early days used chassis ground as the negative conductor for the speakers. None of these systems were known for good sound. Once our shop could afford a spectrum analyzer we could show that speaker wires run across sheet metal would produce a high frequency rolloff just from inductance into the metal if the runs were long enough. In my own car I ran speaker wires through the center console and across the inside of the dash instead of under the carpet for this reason.
The guy at GR Research is a charlatan. He does videos claiming £2000 power cords improve his expensive system.
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Can you link the $2,000 power cord he sells? Or a video on it? I'm having trouble finding it.
At first glance, I believed that any efforts to improve your system by introducing a change in power cable after the wall receptacle would be fruitless, because it still connects through the house to your service panel via 14 or 12 gauge romex.
But as I have heard it explained - the fancy cable may contain shorting rings or magnetic toroids, or EMI / RFI -cancelling wiring patterns in it which make the difference. Like having filters on your power before they reach your equipment. In such a case I don't consider the matter settled or proven, but I've never tried it myself to be qualified to speak on it.
IMO I consider it "plausible" that some difference in the cleanliness of the power delivery is possible, and if noisy power can affect sound in a top-tier system, then maybe it's worth considering for some.
I have a solar photovoltaic system attached to my shop, and it creates AC via inverters which chop up the DC. I have never connected any hifi equipment to it, but I have connected cheap little radios to that supply and AM reception is impossible, and FM has a ring to it that is definitely audible. Does this mean that an analog or digitally sourced system will also suffer? Perhaps, perhaps not, but this experience says to me that the most basic and simple technologies are susceptible to interference, and extrapolating from that I might suggest that a very high end system should be fed the cleanest power possible.
If power cords can make a difference, I would put it near the bottom of the lists of things to do to improve sound quality, and only if you have the money, and only if you're trying to shave that 1/10th of 1 percent that's left over after you've done everything else.
As far as that guy being a charlatan, I have watched a lot of his videos on achieving better frequency response and driver integration through replacing the crossovers with his modified designs. My experience can find no fault in his reasoning, although it's subjective whether or not some people prefer the more flat frequency responses to the way the speakers sound unmodified.
Can you link the $2,000 power cord he sells? Or a video on it? I'm having trouble finding it.
At first glance, I believed that any efforts to improve your system by introducing a change in power cable after the wall receptacle would be fruitless, because it still connects through the house to your service panel via 14 or 12 gauge romex.
But as I have heard it explained - the fancy cable may contain shorting rings or magnetic toroids, or EMI / RFI -cancelling wiring patterns in it which make the difference. Like having filters on your power before they reach your equipment. In such a case I don't consider the matter settled or proven, but I've never tried it myself to be qualified to speak on it.
IMO I consider it "plausible" that some difference in the cleanliness of the power delivery is possible, and if noisy power can affect sound in a top-tier system, then maybe it's worth considering for some.
I have a solar photovoltaic system attached to my shop, and it creates AC via inverters which chop up the DC. I have never connected any hifi equipment to it, but I have connected cheap little radios to that supply and AM reception is impossible, and FM has a ring to it that is definitely audible. Does this mean that an analog or digitally sourced system will also suffer? Perhaps, perhaps not, but this experience says to me that the most basic and simple technologies are susceptible to interference, and extrapolating from that I might suggest that a very high end system should be fed the cleanest power possible.
If power cords can make a difference, I would put it near the bottom of the lists of things to do to improve sound quality, and only if you have the money, and only if you're trying to shave that 1/10th of 1 percent that's left over after you've done everything else.
As far as that guy being a charlatan, I have watched a lot of his videos on achieving better frequency response and driver integration through replacing the crossovers with his modified designs. My experience can find no fault in his reasoning, although it's subjective whether or not some people prefer the more flat frequency responses to the way the speakers sound unmodified.
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Is that claim about the other guy coming from a naive realist? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naïve_realism_(psychology)
And Rod is right, bi-wiring can make difference, only the differences are very small and most likely not perceivable.
What I miss in the bi-wiring discussion is:
Klippel shows [ref] that most of the distortion of a speakers also shows up as distortion in the current.
This current will cause distortion components being exchanged between the drivers via the the resistance of the speaker cable.
Sure as the speaker cable resistance is much lower than the impedance of the speakers this effect will be very small but not zero!
The material does matter. Steel is not as good conductor as copper by a long shot. I do think it's audible, but what I hear is a loss of high frequencies and detail not any kind of ultrasonic ringing unless it does something to the amplifier. I would love to see the good doctors data but I don't think it will ever be published being proprietary design data. Like most of us here I will rely on my ears. I don't use banana jacks, they are convenient but don't connect positively, and like we both pointed out, they are absolute crap. I don't think I've ever 'heard' a speaker cable though.
Now as to the distortion that was measured, we know nothing about it. Also I'm a skeptic, I don't believe PHD's simply because they are PHDs. That's blind faith and I'm not capable of it. This plays into the placebo effect thread topic quite well. Did you hear distortion from your connectors before or after the Dr said it exists? Just because distortion is measurable is it audible?
I'm still thankful that I'm deaf in one ear and can't hear with the other. I save a ton of money.
Steel and iron are also magnetically hysteretic. That's where the distortion comes from, not from resistance.
Its also inductive, which can be used to make a filter.
How many here choose to rely on measurements instead? Less than half?
It will vary in every case due to the particulars.
What does that even mean? That you are skeptical men landed on the moon? Skeptical that magnetic hysteresis exists?
Maybe rather than a skeptic you are more of a naive realist?
Naïve Realism is the human tendency to form one’s own worldview regarding various subjects, perceived by an individual as the only truth. Accordingly the individual believes that other people’s reluctance to share his or her views arises from ignorance, irrationality, an inability to draw reasonable conclusions from objective evidence, ideological biases, or self-interest. The psychological bias of naïve realism causes people to see the world in a unilateral and simplistic manner. As a result of this bias, people tend to ignore or reject any information that does not fit their pre- existing worldview, which is perceived by them as the only truth. Consequently, they fail to see things from several points of view and may miss opportunities for change and progress.
https://nautil.us/are-you-a-naive-realist-238495/
Audibility is not a binary (yes/no) question. Its an estimate of an average sensitivity level for a population. Even for one person, its not a binary question. Its based on whether you can detect an effect with some statical probability. That is to say, its based on what percentage of the time you can correctly notice some sensory effect at a particular level.
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^ That's very kind. Just in case you (or anyone) took that seriously - that is only a joke / turn of phrase. I do have age-related hearing loss and a bit of tinnitus that comes and goes, but I still quite enjoy music. 🙂
My poor attempt at humor was only to convey that because I don't have "golden ears", I don't spend money on lots of things that many people feel quite passionately about re: being able to hear the changes. When I change a power cord / flip a fuse, I can't hear the difference. Rather than worry about whether some people can or can't ... I just am happy that I can't hear the difference. It saves me a ton of money vs. thinking I may need to buy fancy speaker cables / power cords / fuses to "get the most" out of my system.
Hope that makes it a bit more clear.
My poor attempt at humor was only to convey that because I don't have "golden ears", I don't spend money on lots of things that many people feel quite passionately about re: being able to hear the changes. When I change a power cord / flip a fuse, I can't hear the difference. Rather than worry about whether some people can or can't ... I just am happy that I can't hear the difference. It saves me a ton of money vs. thinking I may need to buy fancy speaker cables / power cords / fuses to "get the most" out of my system.
Hope that makes it a bit more clear.
I'm sure "they" can't hear a difference either, except in the most perverse situation, there's a lot of EMI and the power cord has so much capacitance and/or inductance that it acts as an EMI filter. Even then, a good EMI filter would be 1/10th or 1/100th the cost of the fancy cable.
^True. However some people might not like ferrites in the power filter, say, due to possible sonic effects which have probably been discussed plenty in other threads already. Some power filters sound okay though. Very soft ferrites might be preferable to ones with the highest attenuation at the lowest cost.
That’s a broad statement, to put it politely. Issue or not, they aren’t necessarily designed to be exposed to the signal path. Ferrites can be and probably should be part of a good supply.
I know people who remove the ferrite power filters from their equipment, replace them with unfiltered IEC inlets, and then use an old PS Audio regenerator for power quality instead. This includes by someone who NP once described as, "still having one of the best pairs of ears in the business." One can believe it or not, but I know the guy and he is as NP said.
Similarly, I just went through removing ferrites from DC power filtering in some audio dac and in some clock squaring circuit designs. Not in the signal path, mind you. IMHO, it was a cockup to put ferrites there in the first place.
There is also a paper attached to a post in my clock board thread that talks about problems using ferrites in power distribution systems for high speed digital.
IMHO and IME, ferrites are not as innocuous as ferrite manufacturers would have you believe.
Link to post with attached paper: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/general-purpose-dac-clock-board.413001/post-7765137
Similarly, I just went through removing ferrites from DC power filtering in some audio dac and in some clock squaring circuit designs. Not in the signal path, mind you. IMHO, it was a cockup to put ferrites there in the first place.
There is also a paper attached to a post in my clock board thread that talks about problems using ferrites in power distribution systems for high speed digital.
IMHO and IME, ferrites are not as innocuous as ferrite manufacturers would have you believe.
Link to post with attached paper: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/general-purpose-dac-clock-board.413001/post-7765137
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