Not before, Dominic, I compliment you on your earlier (rather enlightened) post. Let's tackle the juiciest bits....
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Originally Posted by
nonuffin
I think you been a bit too gracious towards accepted 'wisdoms' as to be honest they have only paid lip service to the subject, relying only on resistance, inductance and capacitance as the beginning, middle and end of the knowledge base which has remained virtually static since the 1940's.
...which is why, in isolation, it's simply too 'blunt' a tool to use for conclusively disproving the existence of effects people hear with 'fancy mains leads'. Yet the naysayers stubbornly cling onto it, as the basis for defending their position, in order to protect themselves from a fatal attack of cognitive dissonance;)
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Those measurements being used to evaluate cable performance are flawed because they are primitive in the extreme. For a start, they are purely static measurements and bear no relation whatsoever in the measurement of complex frequencies, interactions and dynamics found in real music reproduction, because they are unable to do so and won't admit that. It is the very reason objectivists throw a smoke screen of pointless accusations like placebo and expectation bias to divert attention away from those shortcomings.
Yup, and I've witnessed that blinkered behaviour from them time and time again, over the years, whenever these types of subjects come up. Why can't they be more open-minded to new possibilities and admit that their argument is flawed? Real scientists would never be so arrogant as to assume they know it all, so these wannabe ones/self-appointed 'experts' you see on forums, lecturing to all and sundry about how right they are on subjects such as this, should learn to take a few humility pills...!
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No wonder I bristle plenty when they are aimed at me in these debates, because I may be placebo'ed a couple times at most, have some sort of expectation bias a few times perhaps, but after hundreds of times over several decades certainly not and I always challenge these people to show me evidence of prolonged, sustained and repeatable facts that these conditions can be maintained for hundreds of times and spanning decades. They can't, because that evidence does not exist.
Indeed, and that is exactly my stance on the matter. Of course I've been fooled a few times over the years, when assessing things like cables, and been a victim of expectation bias, but not EVERY time I hear something that doesn't fit with accepted wisdom, or the contents of 'Johnny's Bible of Scientific Facts, from 1940'. Like you say, objectivists use it as a convenient smokescreen to deflect attention away from the vulnerability of their (often flawed) arguments.
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I jokingly said earlier in this thread that a mains cable is not there just to convey electricity from the wall socket to the system without spilling any on the carpet and after deep cogitation for more time than I would admit to, I realised that a mains cable has more demands on it than just that simple job. If you think that it is no more than a narrow bore pipe for a steady trickle of leccy to keep your system well fed with the stuff, then you couldn't be more wrong. The current flow demand can change instantaneously from a mere trickle to a full blown call of 20 amps plus in a millisecond, but, "Aha" you might say, the power supply should provide that, but it doesn't and cannot because where exactly does all this power come from? I was taught many moons ago that a capacitor cannot discharge and charge at the same time and logic says that is true, so while the capacitor is trying to supply peak current for a transient or bass, what happens to the charge cycle for the next transient peak come from? There is always a delay and a poorly built mains cable just adds even more delay, longer in fact than the charge rate of the capacitor. It is the only sensible(ish) answer I could find that addressed the issue of bass boom and overhang from a loudspeaker which miraculously vanished when an upgrade mains cable was installed. This bass overhang is the signature for me that the mains cable is not up to scratch.
That's most interesting, and for me a credible explanation of what's happening. It certainly reflects my experience of the matter, particularly the bass overhang thing, which for me is almost always symptomatic of what you describe. Experience tells me that one of the first improvements heard when substituting a 'cheapo kettle lead' [let's just call it that for now, Andrew] with something better suited for use in hi-fi applications, is a tightening of the bass, which previously (in comparison) was a little bloated. There are other effects too, but that's almost always the main one.
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Metallurgy I say also plays a major part with mains cables, not just curing bass overhang but also hiss. I was at a dealers and we were trying out mains cables on a Consonance valve system with corner horns. I noticed that the noise floor and particularly hiss was considerably reduced almost to zero with the pure silver power cord, which shocked me as I thought that hiss was "one of those things" we all had to live with as it was inherent with amplifiers. It is known fact that silver is more conductive than copper but it must also have a different grain structure in the metal but this wasn't confirmed in my own mind until some nice chap in Japan was also similarly inclined to the grain boundary theory and took steps to manufacture copper wire without them. When OHNO cast cables came onto the scene a similar thing happened compared to a normal copper cable, the hiss was substantially reduced. The continuous casting process virtually eliminates the grain boundaries of the metal, so it is not unreasonable to assume that it is those same grain boundaries that gives rise to hiss. The theory is that hiss is a series of millions of microscopic 'explosions' or arcs as the electrical current jumps across these boundaries. Electricity isn't like water flowing through a pipe but an electromotive magnetic force which has no physical contact with the metal itself so I am told, although the evidence seems to contradict this. Here we go again.
Again, all very interesting stuff, and the kind of input I enjoy seeing in these discussions: people relating their genuine experiences and 'throwing out' some ideas for consideration, which possibly helps explain what they've heard, thus stimulating discussion of the subject, rather than it being shot down by arrogant, blinkered objectivists who are more keen on massaging their egos and protecting their belief systems from scrutiny, than on entertaining the possibility of learning something new!
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It may be this trait often gets referred to as the music emanating from the proverbial "inky blackness" that many listeners enthuse over.
It's definitely a possibility, and not something I've noticed being suggested before. Moreover, it's certainly the type of helpful lateral thinking we like to encourage on AoS, as opposed to the unhelpful closed-mindedness and relentless rubbishing of ideas, put forward by people for consideration, which we so often see instead elsewhere, when they don't fit with the established objectivist dogma.
Anyway, do hang around and keep up the good work. You're one of the most interesting new members we've had join us in ages! :cool:
Marco.