The whole truth and nothing but?

[aquapiranha]

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else, so what does the panel make of this...?

http://asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications/2011/1/Russ-Andrews-Accessories-Ltd/TF_ADJ_49597.aspx

I think the crux of the problem seems to be that mr andrews put his thoughts into print, whereas if he had left it on the web he would have been ok?

:doh:

[Techno Commander]

Selling mains leads without an earth conductor is decidedly iffy though.


The expert went on to say the test also did not connect a protective conductor in the mains lead (i.e. the green or green/yellow insulated wire) which rendered any results unrepresentative of a device for which, in proper usage, a protective conductor would be connected

[UV101]

Earth - if it was a figure 8 plug, where does it go??????

I have no RA mains products but I'm fairly sure the effect of woven cable is a positive. I do run 8tc speaker cable.

I'm about to make my own mains cable using crystal24. It will have a CPC/Earth conductor running through the middle of the weave..

Isn't it fairly widely agreed that a good Earth is essential in high end systems???

[aquapiranha]

I dont think the ASA were too concerned about electrical safety, but rather the claims about the cable removing RFI etc. I am unsure though that any precident has been set here.

[Welder]

Great, I hope we see a lot more intervention from the ASA concerning the claims made by some manufacturers and retailers concerning Hi Fi components.
The problem is it only takes a few reviews or posts saying how wonderful these products are for the product to gain credence when more often than not the product materials can be purchased elsewhere at a fraction of the cost with a proper technical description.

Some companies seem less prone to this sort of advertising than others, letting the product speak for itself.
These days, if I see this type of audio bullshite on a manufacturers or retailers site then I just don’t bother buying from them.

[synsei]

I have no idea whether Russ Andrews products do what they are meant to do, but by God the guy does go on a bit on his website... :rolleyes:

I'm inclined to agree with John, Sure, it is expected of a manufacturer to advertise their wares, but when it begins to deteriorate into 'techno-babble' I switch off and move on...

[MartinT]

I have many Powerkords and the three-core ones do connect earth while the figure-8 ones do not (of course). It seems to me that RA has been caught out by the issue of our general inability to measure what we hear.

Powerkords make a substantial improvement over standard cables - I can hear and repeat the difference in my system. However, whether it is RFI rejection or some other mechanism is still not well understood. RA has made a lot of claims in print and I suspect that a disgruntled customer has challenged them knowing that it cannot be substantiated.

Frankly, all cable vendors would be vulnerable to a negative ASA finding and RA have just been unlucky and a little foolhardy. It doesn't change the fact that many cables make a difference, it's just that the ASA have taken a purely scientific measurement stance.

[zanash]

I'm with martint here..

I've built cables on a diy and commercial basis for a number of years .....I can easily build a cable that I can hear changes the sound ...but I know what to listen for !

If you can't easily measure the sublte [and don't let anyone say there not ] changes cables can make ..or to a none hifi prosecution [if that the right term ] then your going to find yourself in deep do do . I never make any claims for the cables I've made , but suggest that the listener makes up there own mind ....

I've had no cable returned that I've sold .....bar one for a failed solder joint . Therefore onbe can assume that everyone is happy with the product .

The second aspect is why can't some people hear what cables do ....I was involved with a demo of seven visually identical cables ,internally they were very different ...in a room of ten plus people only one person said they all sounded the same ..where as the other nine could hear some or all the of the various cables .

I think the odd person out could hear ...but claimed they could not , as they had already nailed there colours to the mast ..saying they did not believe cables make any sonic changes ..

this of course is just anecdotal ....

Interestingly on mains cables ...an off the shelf cable like oflex cy classic 100 3 core 15 amp out performed a product from australopthicus [if you get the clue] costing x5 as much .....

this was within a one system contex ...this particular combination of variables prefed the cheap cable to the system owner mega buck cable.

This I hope has illistrated some of problem associated with the cable bussiness.

oh ...I'm not currently sell cables as the raw material have become far to expensive to justify the price hike I'd need to make to cover my cost .... ie a simple silver ic has jumped from £50 to £90 ...and my top of the range from £800 to £1200 ...
and if effem is reading ....I still can't source 0.4mm platinum alloy ...the 1mm is over £400 per m !

[Effem]

oh ...I'm not currently sell cables as the raw material have become far to expensive to justify the price hike I'd need to make to cover my cost .... ie a simple silver ic has jumped from £50 to £90 ...and my top of the range from £800 to £1200 ...
and if effem is reading ....I still can't source 0.4mm platinum alloy ...the 1mm is over £400 per m !

That's what killed Krystal off Pete, the cost of the raw materials and overheads, plus the chinese imports didn't help either, so I bailed out before it killed me financially. While at the same time too many people knew the price of everything (or so they believe) and the value of nothing, so each time I tried to raise the prices the customers no longer saw the intrinsic value in the product.

[Effem]

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else, so what does the panel make of this...?

http://asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications/2011/1/Russ-Andrews-Accessories-Ltd/TF_ADJ_49597.aspx

I think the crux of the problem seems to be that mr andrews put his thoughts into print, whereas if he had left it on the web he would have been ok?

:doh:

Afraid not Steve, the ASA has, or shortly will have, the power to take errant website owners to task about the truthfulness of their advertising copy on the internet.

I never ever have subscribed to the notion that it is RFI entering a cable, particularly so mains cables, because the amount of RFI that can break through into any mains cable would be of sufficient power to probably make the fillings in your teeth sing long before an audible effect is heard through your hi-fi system.

More important though is the quality and gauge of wire in a mains cable that can reduce the total loop resistance of the incoming mains supply and the component, so in my view the outer braid screening "to reject RFI" is entirely superfluous

[Barry]

I never ever have subscribed to the notion that it is RFI entering a cable, particularly so mains cables, because the amount of RFI that can break through into any mains cable would be of sufficient power to probably make the fillings in your teeth sing long before an audible effect is heard through your hi-fi system.

More important though is the quality and gauge of wire in a mains cable that can reduce the total loop resistance of the incoming mains supply and the component, so in my view the outer braid screening "to reject RFI" is entirely superfluous

I don’t think one should dismiss the possible pick up of RFI by unshielded cables quite so readily. Cyril Batemen examined this phenomenon and published his findings in Electronics World, June 1997 in an article entitled “RF effects on AF”. In this article, he showed that unshielded speaker leads could act as inefficient antennae to MW radio broadcasts: typically around 1MHz. This effect will be increased if one lives close to an AM radio transmitter, or near an airport that uses an aircraft landing radar system.

Mains leads are much shorter (typically ~ 1m in length), so are going to be even less efficient as antennae. However the flexible mains cables are only part of a much longer system of, usually unshielded, wiring that might pick up RFI and transmit this through the mains cabling. Whatever signal is picked up, it is unlikely to do much ‘damage’ as the mains transformers are not designed to be RF transformers, though the inter-winding capacitance could provide some coupling into the power supply circuits.

Whatever the level of risk, it is the reduction of the effect of this phenomenon that Russ Andrews claims his ‘Power-Kord’ mains cables do. It is important to note that RA’s Power-Kords are not shielded; the claimed reduction of RFI is based on their woven construction that RA suggests create a filter structure.

The ASA’s expert claimed that the woven construction design is “incapable of reducing differential-mode and common-mode noised voltage and currents”. One can do some simple sums to show the woven construction indeed will not help: in fact it actually reduces the ability of the cable to filter out RFI.

RA gives very little information concerning his expensive mains cables (ranging between £70 to £1250 for a metre length fitted with appropriate connectors). He does not even advise us of the current rating of the cables. All we are told is that each current carrying conductor is split into between 8 and 24 individually insulated wires (the numbers vary model to model). In other words the cables have a Litz type construction.

Let us consider one example. Assuming a 6A rating, this would suggest a conductor cross-section area of 0.75sqmm, or a diameter of ~1mm. A standard mains cable having this construction will have a loop inductance of 0.66uH/m (assuming a 0.5mm thick insulation) and an inter-conductor capacitance of ~50pF/m (assuming polythene insulation). Now a 1m cable length corresponds to about 1/200 of a wavelength at 1MHz. As such the distributed reactances can be treated as lumped values, suggesting that the cable acts as a low-pass filter having a cut-off frequency of 36MHz.

Now let us perform the same calculations assuming that the same conductor cross-section is now shared between 8 separate insulated wires. The loop inductance of each pair of strands is now slightly increased to 0.67uH/m, but since there are 8 of these in parallel the inductance is reduced to 0.085uH/m. Similarly the inter-wire capacitance between any pair is reduced to 31.6pF/m, however in weaving these wires together, this capacitance is created between 7 other pairs so increasing the capacitance to ~220pF/m. The cut-off frequency is now actually increased to 36.7MHz, so the woven construction of RA’s Power-Kords has less RFI filtering ability compared to a cable that does not have the Litz construction.

[Effem]

I don't think that RA has ever claimed he can defeat RFI, only reduce it. That is probably based upon the premise that mains leads are of a length that are fractions of a wavelength at 1Mhz or less and the Litz construction further prevents the cable acting as an antenna. But he has never stated this as an objective fact, or even forwarded a purported theory for that matter.

My take on it is RA needed some sort of hook in marketing terms way back in time to explain to the world why his products work in providing a "better sound" because in pure truth he probably didn't know as most cable formulations are by accident rather than by design. "RFI rejection" may have been a nice plausible way of putting his head above the parapet to beat the competition and appease his target audience when no others could.

It is the very fact that so little serious objective research had been carried out on these putative "cable effects" that still rumbles on today with some of the most ferocious and entrenched cable debates that are found on almost every hi-fi forum. But, there has been some progress made and what annoys me is the objectivists are still dredging up erroneous and obsolete data to support their stance. For example, I was being told for years that the human ear cannot differentiate sound level changes in volume below 3db but a test only a year or two ago found that people could repeatedly notice sound level differences as low as 0.01db. Another annoying argument of theirs is that it is all down to "placebo effect" and when challenged to produce the evidence that indeed IT IS ALL DOWN TO PLACEBO EFFECT, they produce nothing at all to support that. The big problem with placebo is that it has a very short shelf life and I know of only one instance where the effect has been consistent and repeatable under controlled conditions.

I believe the truth lies somewhere in between, so neither camp has quite put their finger on the whole story yet and so the debate continues.

[Trickie_Dickie]

It never ceases to amaze me that anyone can claim to reduce RFI in a bit of mains cable when qualified engineers are paid small fortunes by companies to ensure their products have Electro Magnetic Compliance. How many people pay a fortune for special mains leads yet they buy cheap low energy light bulbs ( for example) which can chuck out tons of RFI. :doh:

[MartinT]

In my experience, RA power cables reduce the noise floor of the system and make the background darker, to allow the music to be better enjoyed. It isn't a placebo effect, it's repeatable. Whether this is due to the RFI being suppressed (the drain wire in the braid may be responsible) or some other mechanism, I don't know. What I do know is that they make a difference and I wouldn't be without them.

Also, remember that a lot of this original design and research comes from Ray Kimber, not RA. Kimber knows a thing or two about cables and started in the professional field, making cables that reduced noise injection into studio desks.

[Barry]

Gentlemen

I think we have to put things in perspective.

RA may not state that his mains cables act as filters to RFI, he does claim that his Power-Kord cables reduce the effects of RFI. My post was to confirm the opinion of ASA's "expert", in stating that the woven construction would not reduce the effects of RFI.

With the prevalence of SMPs in modern appliances, the creation of RFI can be a problem. Only a tiny proportion of radiated RFI is picked up - the power levels are just too low, and the cable lengths in use are too short to act as efficient reception antennae. Most of the RFI is conducted through the mains wiring, but again by the time it reaches your audio system it is heavily attenuated. However, if you live near a MW radio transmitter, or your mains supply is provided by long overhead cables, there might be a problem; the overhad cables would act better as antennae. I know of an AoS member who lives not too far away from an airport. He has found that using short-circuiting plugs on those unused inputs on his amplifier to be of benefit.

It is not for me to say that RA's products cannot be of benefit for some people in their systems; it's when the manufacturer makes unsupported claims or talks a lot of irrelevent or erroneous techno-babble that annoys me. I'm more sympathetic to the use of external fitting ferrite sleeves over mains cables in order to increase their inductance, than to any fancy cable construction, or use of exotic mains connectors. If exotic mains cables work for you, so be it: it's your ears, your system, your money.

Whilst modern audio equipment and other domestic goods have to pass CE testing for EMC, audio cables: interconnects; mains cables and speaker cables, do not.

Regards