Nice idea.
See for example what John Atkinson describes:
AudioQuest Compares AC Cables | Stereophile.com
According to the commentary section where Michael Fremer and John Atkinson responded, the level remained the same and the company representative even was willing to change his talk after Michael Fremer indicated the bias introduced by his mentioning of the differences to hear.
That seems to be nearly what you´ve proposed and the interesting question is, if you´re now convinced.....
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The reason we're discussing this is that these cables had a BIG, MEASURABLE difference of 2dB in the demonstration.
That's not hard to test. That's VERY easy to measure.
Apart from the testimony of someone with an axe to grind i see no other evidence for the 2dbs. And what exactly was the measurement setup? A mike hidden in his pants pocket?
Orthodox objectivists, when presented with a clearly audible difference will automatically assume fraud, as any other option is too ghastly to even contemplate
Kay Pirinha, imo there is a slight misunderstanding as Pygmy also thinks that the mentioned "big differences" exists due to manipulation.
Analog_sa by contrast thinks the measurement results were questionable.
As i´ve written beofre, that is similar to my point of view as the description of measurement method and analysis is to sparse.
Again, there might be more information available (holded back for good reasons wrt potential legal trouble), but based on what we know so far the numbers (resp. their uncertainty) are a bit difficult to assess.
But, already according to the (sparse) description there was a 2.5 dB difference between the "ordinary iec cord" and the others. And the most expensive one was again "substantially louder" than the other two from the competitor.
This is either contradictory or the measured difference overall is even larger, depending on what "substantially louder" is in Decibels.....
Additionally we don´t know which audio circuit was used for the demonstration.
Orthodox objectivists, when presented with a clearly audible difference will automatically assume fraud, as any other option is too ghastly to even contemplate
The proper thing to do is ask that the test be repeated with controls when doubt arises. That is not the nature of things when an audience of believers is presented something by a figure in authority. At an AES presentation of ABX I called out that the relay clicks (A to B and B to A) could easily be memorized and anyone could score 100%, at least with the box they had.
I would expect that in a more mixed crowd someone with experience would call out "that just sounds louder" or simply leave.
One could certainly make similar observations of the behavior of orthodox subjectivists. I am eliminating the possibility that the control cable and amp/speaker combination are not selected and/or doctored to get a desired result as this would be fraud.
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Nice idea.
See for example what John Atkinson describes:
AudioQuest Compares AC Cables | Stereophile.com
That seems to be nearly what you´ve proposed and the interesting question is, if you´re now convinced.....
Except that is the demo Fremer recorded and there are clear level differences as Mark found analysing the files.
An excellent point. IME power cords affect many perceived sonic attributes but loudness simply isn't one of them.
Is there a description of the demo setup? Perhaps erroneously i assumed the source was a remote controlled file server in which case any kind of manipulation would be easy.
Do you have a link to the analysis?
At a first glance, wouldn´t that not again bring up the question whether this sort of recording reflects more the uncertainty of the method than a level difference of the presentation?
(If it was the video that Fremer recorded, afair he said it was a camcorder equipped with a shotgun microphone)
And that somebody is wrong.
Even house wiring can introduce noise into devices. Have you ever turned on the vacuum cleaner and seen the lights dim? Or seen them get brighter? This is because two circuits share the same neutral.
It's a good idea to have a dedicated circuit for your audio equipment; one that does not share a neutral with any other circuit. This will go a very long way towards eliminating line induced noise.
And lots of noise can come in on the line. It's not uncommon for service lines and transformers to be run at well over 100% capacity for significant lengths of time. Where I live they don't install bigger transformers until they literally go up in flames. This happens all the time, especially in summer.
All this greatly increases fluctuations and noises coming into your house. If you read your service voltage in real time, you will see periods of large fluctuations and spikes.
The way to eliminate this trash is with the power supply of your device. It works a lot better than cables with gilded velvet insulators and snake scrotum conductors (oxygen free, of course).
BZZZT!!! Time out:
Do snakes even have scrotums?
<google google>
Sir, your statement appears to be a bit of hyperbolic folklore which, although not inappropriate to this particular discussion, is nonetheless inaccurate.
There will be a penalty of five Fremers, and the Tice Clock will restart.
BZZZT!!!
Do snakes even have scrotums?
<google google>
Sir, your statement appears to be a bit of hyperbolic folklore which, although not inappropriate to this particular discussion, is nonetheless inaccurate.
There will be a penalty of five Fremers, and the Tice Clock will restart.
BZZZT!!!
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Quite the opposite, if they are of a technical mind -- find a real, repeatably demonstrable, audio difference not explained by current theory and there are careers, published academic papers and history to be made explaining and finding fixes for them. It's what scientists would love to find. Look at how often companies have advertised new bs audio problems they'd 'finally fixed' over the years. Something real would have the potential for audio fame.
First and foremost scientists love to find funding. That sort of thing cannot raise any. Add to this some deeply ingrained scientific prejudice
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