Yeah, nothing in the power line including power cables make a difference on sound quality. Here's why (they are not in the signal chain):
http://www.audioholics.com/audio-video-cables/power-cables
Is the psu of a device (source, pre-amp, power-amp) in the signal path?
The problem here is that this is a *edit* decent but still not full view.
Whats going on here is even more.
Electricity is alive, fast(at speed of electrons) , and actually more happening, such as mentioned interation of components or stages.
Power supplies arent near as perfect as they should be, mainly because of costs and/or age and parts quality and temp tolerances in which components performance varies. .
So we need take into consideration the
"micro dynamics" that is going on , which is aluded to in next post..
So focusing on power cable alone is missing the point.
Read again:
8ms is time before heat no longer contained?
No, not really.
If you look at the chart for the fuse type used in The Rok, a Littelfuse type 239 fuse…
http://www.littelfuse.com/~/media/electronics_technical/time_curve/fuses/littelfuse_fuse_239_time_curve.pdf
…you'll see that at 8mS, a 4 or 5 amp rated fuse will pass 2-220 amps and its I^2t rating runs from 270 to 302 amps.
The reason they choose 8mS is because that is 1/2 of a 60 cycle waveform, in terms of time.
Which means they are rating the fuses to know how much maximum current will pass during either the positive or the negative portion of the AC power being fed to the equipment the fuse is meant to protect.
And it is relevant to know that of that 8mS time duration, our audio equipment will only pass current for ≈ 2mS ± (mostly minus)
And the amount of current that will pass thru those 4 or 5 amp rated fuses for that 2mS time window, goes up to ≈ 400 amps, which equates to 48Kwatts.
This all points to an interesting way of looking at the power being fed to our audio system components and how we can optimize it and obtain improved SQ as a result.
JJ
Aha!
So you see from this post,
That in real life, whats actually going on is more complex.
This can account for why we hear differences when an item (such as a power cord) is changed...
Granted, that article would be correct, to a certain extent, in a perfect world...
Power supplies in real world are not only imperfect, they can also be a cause of noise, distortion or performance limitations of your equipment.
Thats why I upgraded my power supply in my amp with 3X more Electrolytic value and swapped out the cheap 15cent bridge rectifier(common type) for a better Bridge Rectifier for my amp Power tube section. .
A IXYS FRED Rectifier Bridge FBE22-06N1 ( High performance 600v/22amp rectifier bridge with
fast recovery diodes.
Features:
Planar
passivated chips
Very low
leakage current
Very
short recovery time
Improved
thermal behavior
Very low
LRM values
Very
soft recovery behavior
Avalanche voltage rated for reliable operation
Soft reverse recovery for
low EMI/RFI ...
So you see,(from the bold print) there is ALOT going on, inside your gear!!
Edit:
I read the whole article, and it was actually quite good as a start.