[haloxt]

Hospital grade cable market is the only one Monster Cable Inc is too afraid to enter despite having an army of lawyers.

 

[BIG POPPA]

Blue jeans cable fixed Monster bullying cable companies.

 

[Head Injury]

Quote:

Originally Posted by haloxt /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hospital grade cable market is the only one Monster Cable Inc is too afraid to enter despite having an army of lawyers.

"We have reason to believe that the cables used in your hospital are infringing on our Monster 4Life brand power cables. We recommend you unplug them immediately and contact our office before taking any further action."

 

[sampson_smith]

Ha ha ha. That's rich, Head Injury. :O

 

[fzman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Erik /img/forum/go_quote.gif I see that the resident folklore and mythology experts have staked out this thread. Anyone who thinks a power cord makes a difference ought to contact the manufacturer of their amp to let them know their power supplies suck. Maybe you can even give their engineers some advice on what magical mystery tweak du jour would help. A power supply is designed and engineered to filter AC into DC. You can intentionall dirty AC quite a bit and still get as clean an output on the other end as pure AC. To a point, of course, but this is all in the measurable range of things, not the mystical cryogenic invisible and impossible to measure land of unicorns and faeries where wishes, dreams and fantasies are all equally valid. Think through the consequences and side effects if any of this were true. For eaxmple, if a magical power cord removes "impurites," then the benefit would only apply when the power was bad. Right? So even the most expensive cable (and, for whatever reason, performance always correlates with retail price and not with the value of the components. Apparently, a bigger pricetag arbitrarily decided upon affects sound quality.) would end up with no effect whatsoever if it was fed a clean sine wave. Next, think about all the other wire in your house. If it is so "bad," then why doesn't it ruin the magical purifying "effects" of a power cord? Though, it seems, putting ordinary house wire into a garden hose somehow renders it "special." Who knew? If any length of "special" wire confers benefits, then why does the entire magical power cord have to be made of the same material? Couldn't you just insert 1mm of silver that was cryogenically treated and bathed in the tears of a virgin monk for the same benefit? There are a hundred other unanswerable questions like this. The believers and assorted shills always throw back arguments about hate, being close-minded and too cheap to but an aftermarket cable. Nonsense. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And, here, there isn't any. Nothing. All you have are people reciting folklore and fairy tales, then someone else trying to sell you something for a fat profit. Don't fall for the nonsense.

I am not convinced by your "argument". If we use the filter analogy, then the power cord as filter argument can make some sense, where your response does not-- your claim would be like arguing that a water filter cannot matter because it is only a small amount of pipe/hose at the end of miles of pipe feeding your faucets.

if we consider the power delivery aspect of the cords, and their ability to not transmit or broadcast noise into adjacent cables, then there are real measurable considerations to take into account. Properly designed power cords will offer a lower impedance, and therefore be a better supplier of power. As a MOT I cannot cite specific brands, but there are some worth consideration.

What I can argue is that people keep their minds and ears open, and make their own tests as to whether these things matter or not. With a money-back guarantee, there is little to lose for the testing.

Your paternalistic attitude seems a bit misplaced when people have the opportunity to listen for themselves, with no gun held to their heads. Methinks it smacks a bit too much of trying to rationalize an "always invest never spend" attitude. There really are adequacy conditions for assessing claims about power delivery -- if you will not agree that there are, then you are making religious claims, not scientific ones, no matter how smug and cynical your prose is.

 

[Head Injury]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fzman /img/forum/go_quote.gif I am not convinced by your "argument". If we use the filter analogy, then the power cord as filter argument can make some sense, where your response does not-- your claim would be like arguing that a water filter cannot matter because it is only a small amount of pipe/hose at the end of miles of pipe feeding your faucets..

Forgive me if I'm not reading correctly, but wouldn't the water analogy be better served if the power cord was the last few feet of piping, and the water filter was instead the power supply or conditioner? The power cord, if it's doing any cleaning at all, would not do as much to the electricity as a power supply, that being its job. It's only transferring electricity from the outlet. High quality pipes in the last few feet before the filter won't do anything the filter won't do.

 

[mrarroyo]

I am plagiarizing a source ...

Quote:

Cords used with North American medical equipment must be hospital-grade. What makes the cord hospital grade: the plug. Commonly known as hospital-grade plugs, they are subject to special requirements contained in the following standards: Medical equipment standards: UL 60601-1 and CAN/CSA C22.2 no 60601-1; Power supply cord standards: UL 817 and CAN/CSA C22.2 no 21; Attachment plug standards: UL 498 and CAN/CSA C22.2 no 42. The hospital-grade plug pattern conforms to the NEMA 5-15 standard; however, (1) the blades are usually solid instead of folded brass, (2) the blades are normally nickel-plated, and (3) the plug includes a cable retention device or strain relief to prevent any stress to the plug's internal connections. It is imperative that the ground connection be reliably maintained to protect the patient and medical staff. Although many hospitals prefer that the plug be clear so that internal connections can be inspected visually, the UL and CSA standards do not mandate clear plugs nor do they provide any restrictions on color. Gray is another common color for hospital-grade plugs and cords.

 

[haloxt]

I knew a doctor who bragged his audio power cables were hospital grade. I really wonder if he just took them from some life support patients.

 

[fzman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Head Injury /img/forum/go_quote.gif Forgive me if I'm not reading correctly, but wouldn't the water analogy be better served if the power cord was the last few feet of piping, and the water filter was instead the power supply or conditioner? The power cord, if it's doing any cleaning at all, would not do as much to the electricity as a power supply, that being its job. It's only transferring electricity from the outlet. High quality pipes in the last few feet before the filter won't do anything the filter won't do.

Yah, this was a bit poorly expressed- I was typing it at work...

I myself subscribe to the view that the power cord is the first few feet of cord- and is really an extension of the primary of the power transformer, and that the main job of the power cord is as low impedence as possible power delivery, while not acting as a transmit or receive antenna for rf and other nasties.

what I was arguing against was the "last few feet" argument, and that is, that the last few feet of cord could not make a difference. The analogy was that the water filter is pretty much at the point of delivery of the water to the glass.... and that it certainly does make a difference, even at the end of the chain-- no further analogy was intended. (Let's not even get into the slippery slope fallacy of only using 1 mm of magic wire-- doubly sophisitical inside the context of an argument which simply begged the question to begin with)

I also think that proper power conditioning is beneficial to av systems, both as power distribution, and as filtering the noise from the utility as well as from the system itself. Asymmetrical waveforms and dc can drive (toroidal) transformers crazy, and harmonic distortion on the AC makes the psu work harder, or gets thru the supply to the signal path.

These things are measurable, but few have the equipment to do so. Measurements in hand, we would still have to argue the efficacy of specific products, and their price-performance ratios, and how they stack up against the competition.

Some argue, a priori, cloaked as scientific argument, that none of these products do anything useful, and are therefore rip-offs, without allowing anything to count as evidence against these claims. They will claim, as Uncleric(sp?) has, that the burden of proof is solely on the side of those claiming that ac products matter. I'd like to see them produce measurements and substantive claims about those measurements to show that ac products cannot matter - all I have seen is smug, glib prose (however entertaining to read). Specify adequacy conditions (aka falsifiability conditions for your position, and I will consider it a scientific position, not a "religious" one.

Hope that is clearer. I am constrained by MOT status, and take that seriously, to not name names and specify listening results -- I do have them, and stand behind them.

 

[Happy Camper]

Everybody run, a cable piper.

Thanks for interjecting some pro effort to the discussion fzman but ignorance is easily duped by flamboyant naysayers with an axe to grind.

 

[rsaavedra]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fzman /img/forum/go_quote.gif The analogy was that the water filter is pretty much at the point of delivery of the water to the glass.... and that it certainly does make a difference, even at the end of the chain--

Pretty bad analogy, because dirty water gets filtered by the filter. So if the pipes before the filter were bad and dirty pipes, but you put a filter right before the tap you drink from, that definitely makes a difference. The water will come out cleaner because of the filter.

NOT so with a power cord.

Dirty AC electricity is not "filtered" or cleaned by any cable. A good cable will just conduct that electricity, however dirty that electricity already was. The cable might be built to prevent further interference from entering, that's fine. But on the one hand, that's not expensive to build, and on the other hand, it is definitely not like a filter. If you had dirty electricity to begin with, going through a properly shielded power cord (whether appropriately priced or ridiculously expensive) won't change that dirtiness in the AC any little bit.

And once again, it's AC what that power cord is conducting. The power supply in the equipment being driven will convert that AC to DC, which is hugely different. Wait, let me put that in uppercase, bold, and italics, in case it isn't well known: DC is HUGELY DIFFERENT from AC.

If we would try to use your filter analogy, the very power supply would be that sort of final "filter", but it's not just a filter which "cleans" one type of thing; it's rather a whole Refinery; it transforms what comes into it into a whole different kind of thing. (I'd recommend checking the boiler system analogy once more, but I'm becoming too much of a bore with such repetition. Anyone interested should have looked at it and thought about it carefuly enough already.)

Whatever effect the power cord has is absolutely negligible compared to the major transformation a regulated power supply does converting AC to DC. Unless it's a truly terrible power supply in the first place, letting out through its DC output any trace of interference caught precisely by the power cord on the AC it was carrying, and not by the rest of the whole AC power lines and system before that power cord.

 

[waterlogic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fzman /img/forum/go_quote.gif Some argue, a priori, cloaked as scientific argument, that none of these products do anything useful, and are therefore rip-offs, ...

Such products are not rip-offs - they are fraud and as such people selling them should be processed by law.

And you have the equipment to measure what a power cord does to an audio or av chain ?? Could you pls sell me one - at rip-off pricing?

There are no borders to human stupidity ...

 

[greenhorn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by waterlogic /img/forum/go_quote.gif Such products are not rip-offs - they are fraud and as such people selling them should be processed by law.

Well said.

 

[h.rav]

^ +1, post of the month. ;p

 

[SP Wild]

^ -1, Good luck with submitting your "evidence" to the court of law.