Makes my head hurt
Join Our Community Subscribe to Paul's PostsI had accidentally stumbled on something interesting in my development of a new preamplifier: a 14 gauge small diameter power cable didn’t sound as good as a larger diameter 12 gauge power cable. In an easily repeatable experiment I could change the amount of body and fullness in the music by simply changing power cables.
This made no sense on a number of levels: the preamp was not drawing any appreciable power from the wall and what the heck difference would 6 feet of cable make when I was connecting to several hundred feet of exposed copper wire in the wall of my lab?
As I looked a little closer I also noticed that the 12 gauge power cable was shielded and the 14 gauge was not. Hmmmm. I got another smaller gauge cable to try, only this time it too was shielded. Bingo, the fullness of the sound was the same but something else had changed: there was an increased openness to the sound that wasn’t there with the original unshielded small cable.
So wire gauge seemed to have something to do with the fullness – heavier wire gave a fuller sound – and shielding also affected the sound – it opened up the soundstage. This was all very mysterious and hurt my head to contemplate what I was hearing because it flew in the face of anything making sense. So I decided to try a little experiment.
I went down to the local hardware store and bought male and female AC plug ends so I could build my own cables. I then purchased two lengths of 12 gauge, 3-conductor cables – one was a stranded type like that found in the power cables I was using, the other a solid core copper wire like what was in my wall – and built two unshielded power cables.
To my great surprise they sounded quite different again – the stranded 12 gauge cable lost some of the openness I had heard while the solid core cable had gained even more body and openness than the stranded. I figured that the unshielded stranded version “made sense” but the solid core? The solid core is what’s in the wall and essentially what I had done is put an added 6 feet onto my lab’s power line. How could that do anything?
The only logic I could come up with is that adding the 6 feet of solid core did nothing to the sound – but adding 6 feet of stranded onto the hundreds of feet of solid core in the walls – somehow degraded the sound of my preamp.
My conclusion was that one wasn’t better than the other – but rather – one was worse than essentially nothing.
This all made my head hurt and I went home to have a beer.
Hi Paul.
Again I can see here two groups: one group argues pro the other con shielded cables. One argues pro the other con metallic housings.
These groups can easily present a model for their understanding of the often very different effects. I assume that both might be right due to the complexity of parameters involved .
But what I miss: both groups do not follow their theory for 100%: why not replacing the cheap internal speaker cable after having invested in a speaker cable costing the same amount of money as the speaker? Or why not replacing the internal wires (stranded and non-shielded) between the the power plug on the rear plate and the transformer of the internal power supply? Same for the cables leaving the transformer that strange enough is not (mu-metal) shielded in most cases!
And finally why not replacing all internal non-shielded and stranded cables catching the EM pollution?????
Seeing all the different approaches for “tweaking” a system I doubt that the (marketing) theories told here to explain the function really deceive what happens – especially when missing any scientically based measurement!
Regards
I agree with Paul, Paul?, Oh!, Which Paul?
As a neophyte in all these audio applied sciences, one that always does is to question, question and question …
I think we should change paradigms to advance to further improve the equipment. Why should we buy separate preamplifier and amplifier? Above current requiring multiple connections (cables) between them? While there are fewer wires, or shorter, better.
In a previous post I stated that my speakers were switched its internal wires and the sound improved. My problem is that I have made so many changes and testing of different kinds, all inexpensive, and in general have always been improving sound, fundamentally improving transparency, as if they were layers of smog that you can not see (listen) the actual sound that is able to provide the equipment you have.
The question and my question is when to stop. How to know when you’ve reached the maximum that can give your teams.
I’ve dated some of the original post, but the cables as Paul, Oh!, Which Paul?, (McGowan) apparently deteriorate more the sound that composing.
Regards,
The truth is we’re so far away from perfect that you can continue to improve over a lifetime and never get close – so it’s fine to keep tweaking. Sometimes I am able to fool myself into believing what I am hearing is really in the room, but it’s rare and when I do something to cause this to happen, it’s a thrilling moment.
It is Truth, Paul.
I always tell my friends, that more than a hobby is a disease.
Paul I’m using your PerfectWave AC-3 cable on my Marsh preamp. I have used this cable on a number of pieces in my rig with positive results. The option of the removable ground plug is a no brainer. Bravo sir!
Regards,
Bret
Thanks Bret!
In my system six PerfectWave AC-10s rule.
In the my, 1 PerfectWave AC-5 for power and 3 Xindak FP-1 for Pre/pro, DVD and Subwoofer.
I’ve been using PS Audio cables since the Lab series and still use the PP 300.
Sometimes I see sellers on eBay ( usually in HK or China) selling what seem to be perfect clones of the AC-10 and AC-12 for just a couple hundred bucks. How do they get away with this? Are they using they same materials as your cables? They sure look identical, right down to the printed box. Is it possible they are genuine parts that somehow found their way onto the gray market?
Anything is possible but the ones we’ve purchased and cut in half were clearly counterfeit and they didn’t bother to make the insides the same – only the outsides.
Mmmmm …… Beer!
Good day Paul:
I ran into a similar situation with a home made shielded cable plugged into DAC. It defiantly sounded better than the stock cable.
I’ve run across similar situations swapping out stock RCA chassis mounts with a Kimber silver rhodium chassis mount and the sound improved (same DAC by the way). i had a friend who was an electrical engineer who is quite knowledgeable about the math and instrumentation of electronics. His faith was in science. He did not believe that there could have been a noticeable improvement in sound. Even after he listened and agreed that there was an improvement in sound, he came up with excuses like “it must be the solder joint”.
Ultimately God gave us the best sound meters going, our ears! At the end of the day, our ears are the best measurement tool going. Keep experimenting, when you have reached a place where you say to yourself “wow, that sounds good”, you have achieved.
Guy