Well engineered for what purpose though? To tweak the sound of, say, for example, a $250,000 amplifier? Some power cords may be painstakingly engineered exactly for that. There is a market for it after all. Some audiophiles may like the tweak their systems in such ways. Its a hobby for them, apparently. Not saying its a good idea.
well for me well engineered means carries power safely and according to known engineering best practice. Anything made to change the sound, however carefully done is attempting to fleece the customer and given the prices charged I personally don't feel happy about that. But plenty of people do seem to want to get fleeced and are happy with the outcome.
Okay, fair enough. Understand the sentiment myself.
However IME there is still a problem. I can swap coupling caps made of different dielectrics. Have them on gold pin headers so they can be A/B compared pretty quickly. These caps are not engineered to fleece anyone. But they do sound different from one another. Probably some of them would even be pretty audible after going through youtube and a laptop sound card. I could make a recording, but if some people heard a difference they would claim the recording was 'doctored' because they don't believe its possible. The only way to convince people is to have them in the room, inspect the circuitry themselves, test and or measure anything they want, and then swap the caps themselves.
Of course maybe they will be kind of like Stanley Lipshitz and walk out of the room so they don't have to listen?
However IME there is still a problem. I can swap coupling caps made of different dielectrics. Have them on gold pin headers so they can be A/B compared pretty quickly. These caps are not engineered to fleece anyone. But they do sound different from one another. Probably some of them would even be pretty audible after going through youtube and a laptop sound card. I could make a recording, but if some people heard a difference they would claim the recording was 'doctored' because they don't believe its possible. The only way to convince people is to have them in the room, inspect the circuitry themselves, test and or measure anything they want, and then swap the caps themselves.
Of course maybe they will be kind of like Stanley Lipshitz and walk out of the room so they don't have to listen?
Its relevant to the psychology of power cord sound effect denial, and to human rejection of disconfirming evidence in general. I mean, human bias is in play here on both sides of the arguments. Some of the EEs are way overconfident they are not biased, only guys on the other side are. Nonsense, say psychologists who study human cognition. All humans are biased in all sorts of ways, its just that its easy to see the other guy's bias, but near impossible to see one's own. That's true for any creature thinking by way of a human brain. Hard to believe for some. Some people will reject if flat out. "I know I am objective, and I can see its you who is deluded by biases." Pretty typical example of bias on the part of the person claiming to be objective. That's the science, for those who claim to believe in science. Now waiting to see if what I just said evokes some science denial on the part of some self-described science believer...not really relevant here
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Now you are blinding with bull again. Science comes up with a theory, defines a test, measures then looks at the results. None of that is happening here yet people are being accused of bias against sighted listening tests somehow proving something. Really sorry cannot accept that. If Rick or the youtube peddlars actually did that then I might take them seriously, but they don't so I don't.
lol,
can I join your cable & power conditioner cult?
:DBut seriously, that's not how EMI issues usually manifests in audio gears, by a large margin, you have to back up your rose clouded claims with some proper measurements.
:)oh, and those YT videos, the rather mediocre lossy audio compression used by YouTube (they will re-encode any audio file with their own codecs and so it's nothing we can influence upon no matter how high res files we upload, the info what codecs, bit rates etc are used for audio and video contents is on Google's support pages) introduces by far greater distortion to any recorded audio file than a cable or power conditioner would solve.
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EDIT:
"Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe."
"Science may be as old as the human species,[3] and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes."
https://www.tinysa.org/wiki/
Anyway, the one true test is reliable testable prediction of the future. I predict different caps will sound different, likely audibly so even after lossy compression and going through a laptop sound card, and without any 'doctoring.' Up to you to satisfy yourself there has been no doctoring, since you are the one making the claim. If it requires stopping by Auburn sometime, you are always welcome.
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stop waffling and upload some before and after files.. oh, thats right your busy
Really, you're serious are you? Prove it. Go back and listen to youtube video I did that compares two power cords. Then describe what you hear that's different between them, and explain to us how it might not actually be a doctored recording. What else could it be if it isn't in fact doctored? If you think you can be objective then post your listening impressions here or PM them to me. If you show yourself qualified to listen to gross differences then maybe I would be willing to go to some effort for you.
However, if you are only looking to set a trap whereby you don't listen at all, but you just start claiming doctoring, fraud, snake oil, etc., then I won't waste my time. In that case you would have an agenda which is not about finding truth. Rather it would be more like you are extremely confident you already know THE TRUTH. And thus your only interest would to attack, to try to ruin, those you disagree with.
Well, what kind of person are you then? You know THE TRUTH already, and you are here to defend it?
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Yes! (obviously, or else I wouldnt ask would I?)
Would you be so kind as to post the link to the youtube video you made, I seem to have overlooked it being posted in this thread
A sprinkling of paranoia seeps into the conversation....interesting.. (and dont shout)
Do I have to pass some sort of test? who judges me? do i get a certificate?
Can someone remind me why I am posting in a cable thread that got moved to the Lounge?
Post with link is: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/power-conditioners-and-cords.391921/post-7222996
Hopefully we can discuss what it sounds like without the thread going off the rails. If you are serious, I will try to record something. Last time I recorded something for the forum it was one carefully documented cymbal hit. Playback time probably was less than a minute. Took at least three hours from the time I started setting up the recording equipment in the living room, recorded several hits some of which clipped and or weren't allowed to fully fade out, edited one good hit out, saved to to a wave file, wrote up a detailed description of the equipment used, posted it, cleaned up the recording gear, and restored the living room to its original state.
To do what we are talking about for this thread, I have maybe three possible ADCs I would consider as good candidates for accurate recordings. Have to decide whether to record from the speakers or direct, and if direct how I want to interface without damage to the ADC, run some tests, pick some test music, figure out how I want to edit the results (because I found out the program I used to rely on, Reaper, was poorly resampling the wav output even if there was no reason to), verify the output wav file or files are accurate, etc. The end result might be listened to in a few minutes, but it will take hours of work on my part to make it happen. Supposed to host a guest here this weekend, supposed to be doing other stuff too for the next few days. Next week sometime would be about the soonest.
Hopefully we can discuss what it sounds like without the thread going off the rails. If you are serious, I will try to record something. Last time I recorded something for the forum it was one carefully documented cymbal hit. Playback time probably was less than a minute. Took at least three hours from the time I started setting up the recording equipment in the living room, recorded several hits some of which clipped and or weren't allowed to fully fade out, edited one good hit out, saved to to a wave file, wrote up a detailed description of the equipment used, posted it, cleaned up the recording gear, and restored the living room to its original state.
To do what we are talking about for this thread, I have maybe three possible ADCs I would consider as good candidates for accurate recordings. Have to decide whether to record from the speakers or direct, and if direct how I want to interface without damage to the ADC, run some tests, pick some test music, figure out how I want to edit the results (because I found out the program I used to rely on, Reaper, was poorly resampling the wav output even if there was no reason to), verify the output wav file or files are accurate, etc. The end result might be listened to in a few minutes, but it will take hours of work on my part to make it happen. Supposed to host a guest here this weekend, supposed to be doing other stuff too for the next few days. Next week sometime would be about the soonest.
Perhaps I can save you some time:
- power cord #1 + CD player digital output to computer...play/record any piece of music you see fit for the challenge
- power cord #2 + CD player digital output to computer...play/record the piece of music again
- you don't have to trim the recordings timewise (start/end), nor should you process/edit them in any way but saving in a losless format
- upload the files.
If the CD player doesn't have a digital output, use one of your ADCs (the first at hand is fine) or a piece of equipment that possibly does (amp/preamp...).
Dissapointed you removed your original post as was ready to challenge that. But you have agreed with me in the 'testable explanations' part. Cable woo and foo has nothing testable.
now what does "sound different, likely audibly so" if they are not audibly different how do they sound different? So you have a hypothesis. Now what is the test scenario and controls?
Maybe you haven't been reading along? What I said about power cords was that I use normal power cords, but with a certain power conditioner. Later I said different caps sound different. I might be able to record the sound of some coupling caps.
I would agree that predictions about certain audible characteristics of different types of coupling capacitors could be reliably testable. That's not the same as saying I have a deep and principled explanation as to why they sound different. However at least I think I can say if people in the forum hear a clear difference on their systems then the difference could considered 'obvious' and not require ABX DBT to establish audibility.
Thought I said 'likely audibly so' in the context of still being audible even after passing through youtube lossy compression and a laptop sound card? In other words, we are not talking about extremely subtle differences only a few people can hear. At least, I don't expect that will turn out to be the case.
I just said what I expect to be the case. Didn't say it was a hypothesis for an experiment I can't control using forum members as test subjects. If I post one or more files with obvious audible differences then there are no controls on what happens next. I can't control your systems and or how you use them. What I want to know is who says they can hear some difference and how would those differences be described verbally. In other words, I would like to collect some observations related to descriptive analysis of sounds as perceived by some technical-minded folks. Maybe something will turn up that could later suggest a hypothesis for further study.
EDIT: If people are expecting me to provide recordings of power cords affecting sound, that's a non-starter. Are we all clear on what I might be able to do, and is that wanted or not?
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Quote by Jay's Audio Lab:
"3 powercords are going head to head. Please let me know which powercord you like best and then I'll disclose which powercord is which !"
Yep, I'm the one not reading along!
And who gives a damn about caps - this thread's title is Power Conditioners and Cords!
Okay. A lot of things have been said and it can get hard to keep up with all the details. Caps came up because arguments about audibility parallel in some ways arguments about power cords.
First question is are there audible differences or not? For power cords and caps a lot of the back and forth arguments are reasonably similar. The subject is polarized (no pun intended), audibility is questioned, threads get closed, etc.
A second and separate question might be, once the first question is answered and if audible differences have been observed, then what physical causal mechanisms are responsible? On this question power cords and coupling caps may be less similar (although dielectric properties could be a factor in both cases, for example).
First question is are there audible differences or not? For power cords and caps a lot of the back and forth arguments are reasonably similar. The subject is polarized (no pun intended), audibility is questioned, threads get closed, etc.
A second and separate question might be, once the first question is answered and if audible differences have been observed, then what physical causal mechanisms are responsible? On this question power cords and coupling caps may be less similar (although dielectric properties could be a factor in both cases, for example).
So, that implies it's real, and proven. It isn't. It remains most likely that it's an auditory illusion. Open to evidence, but so far there is none of any real value. (And no, I don't count untrustworthy sources on youtube where there are commercial considerations and the data could well be edited).
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