[gotchaforce]

This question has been bothering me

So companies offer 6 foot power cords right?? but why dont they offer 1 inch extremely high end ones?? of course 1" isnt long enough to reach the wall, so you could just extend it with this: For only $2.16 each when QTY 50+ purchased - Power Extension 16AWG Cable 6ft - Black | External Power Cord & Power Cable


So your setup would look something like this

AMP/CD player <------- 1 inch super power cord <-------- monoprice 16 gauge power cord <-------- outlet <-------- hundreds of miles of electric company crappy cable.

People buy power cords right now because the last 6 feet is apparently what "matters" after the 100 miles of cable the electricity has already traveled over, so obviously you can shrink that "super high end power cord" to 1" and get the same result. I mean as long as the super high end power cable is the last thing between the electricity and the amp right?? isnt that how it works

 

[obobskivich]

hahaha, I was originally thinking this was 100% serious, but I like the irony of your question

basically the audiophile defense of that 6' is: you want the highest quality for what you can control

the rational, engineering rebuke is: who cares, its an inconsequential detail that has no measurable impact on any aspect of performance, as long as the current is delivered in a stable manner with minimal noise/interference (minimal meaning within the limits of rejection by the device) you're good

now, if you were to take a power conditioner, and then feed a few inches of cable off of that into your equipment, thats a new arguement altogether (because now you're at least doing *something* to the line power)

 

[883dave]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gotchaforce /img/forum/go_quote.gif This question has been bothering me So companies offer 6 foot power cords right?? but why dont they offer 1 inch extremely high end ones?? of course 1" isnt long enough to reach the wall, so you could just extend it with this: For only $2.16 each when QTY 50+ purchased - Power Extension 16AWG Cable 6ft - Black | External Power Cord & Power Cable So your setup would look something like this AMP/CD player <------- 1 inch super power cord <-------- monoprice 16 gauge power cord <-------- outlet <-------- hundreds of miles of electric company crappy cable. People buy power cords right now because the last 6 feet is apparently what "matters" after the 100 miles of cable the electricity has already traveled over, so obviously you can shrink that "super high end power cord" to 1" and get the same result. I mean as long as the super high end power cable is the last thing between the electricity and the amp right?? isnt that how it works

Little minds ask (hoping someone can fill them with knowledge), big minds experiment (searching their own knowledge)

How about YOU buy a 1" (or make your own) power cord, plug it into your example.

Then report back what you found???

Sound better than starting a flame war?

 

[MatsudaMan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gotchaforce /img/forum/go_quote.gif This question has been bothering me So companies offer 6 foot power cords right?? but why dont they offer 1 inch extremely high end ones?? of course 1" isnt long enough to reach the wall, so you could just extend it with this: For only $2.16 each when QTY 50+ purchased - Power Extension 16AWG Cable 6ft - Black | External Power Cord & Power Cable So your setup would look something like this AMP/CD player <------- 1 inch super power cord <-------- monoprice 16 gauge power cord <-------- outlet <-------- hundreds of miles of electric company crappy cable. People buy power cords right now because the last 6 feet is apparently what "matters" after the 100 miles of cable the electricity has already traveled over, so obviously you can shrink that "super high end power cord" to 1" and get the same result. I mean as long as the super high end power cable is the last thing between the electricity and the amp right?? isnt that how it works

Your sarcasm is funny. If you can't hear the difference, or your equipment is not effected by a power cord upgrade (or down grade for that matter), there's no reason to be a cynic about it.

There have been so many cable hater's and flamer's threads that have led to nothing but anger and confusion. Just try out some cable, and if they don't make a difference take them back. No reason to be so cynical.

 

[XXII]

Maybe I'm just blind but I can't see why you guys think the OP is being sarcastic or trying to start a flame war...I think it's a valid suggestion.

Anyways to answer the OP, I run a half meter Nordost Vishnu from my power conditioner and yes it makes an noticeable difference. Even without the power conditioner it makes an appretiable difference. Indeed, it was a similar logic to yours that led me to try a half-meter cable...Whether it's the same as a 2 meter Nordost Vishnu I have no idea...

btw...this is the type of question that Patrick82 would have an answer to but I'm not sure how much credit you would put in his answer....

 

[gotchaforce]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 883dave /img/forum/go_quote.gif Little minds ask (hoping someone can fill them with knowledge), big minds experiment (searching their own knowledge) How about YOU buy a 1" (or make your own) power cord, plug it into your example. Then report back what you found??? Sound better than starting a flame war?

Not sure why youre so pissed..

do you find something wrong with my theory??? if you didnt, then arent you happy that youre saving thousands of dollars? head-fiers could do group buys of nordost supreme reference, split a long one up into 1" long sections, and have the best power cord ever in their system for a couple hundred bucks instead of $10,000.

correct? i dont see anything irrational in my argument, if youre a power cord believer, then you believe the last X feet is what matters, and the longer X is chances are the more your power cord costs. So change X down to a super small size like 1", and substitute the rest of your power cord with whats in your walls, and now you have just achieved the same result but with far less money. I dont need to experiment to know this is right, i have applied reason (something introduced in the enlightenment period...) to the argument that the last X distance of your power is what matters.

 

[gotchaforce]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MatsudaMan /img/forum/go_quote.gif Your sarcasm is funny. If you can't hear the difference, or your equipment is not effected by a power cord upgrade (or down grade for that matter), there's no reason to be a cynic about it. There have been so many cable hater's and flamer's threads that have led to nothing but anger and confusion. Just try out some cable, and if they don't make a difference take them back. No reason to be so cynical.

So if you do hear a difference why arent you now upgrading to a 1" pure-silver (or pure high quality copper, or whatever you like) power cord??? Im not saying you do not hear a difference, what i am saying is you are buying 6 feet of expensive cable for no reason.

 

[obobskivich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gotchaforce /img/forum/go_quote.gif So if you do hear a difference why arent you now upgrading to a 1" pure-silver (or pure high quality copper, or whatever you like) power cord??? Im not saying you do not hear a difference, what i am saying is you are buying 6 feet of expensive cable for no reason.

and thats where we're saying you're raking the coals for a flamewar

honestly, don't troll this topic, it gets ugly

your idea is reasonable, from a reasonable perspective, but that would demand audio reproduction to be objective and follow the constraints of common sense reasoning, which it clearly is not, and generally does not, while I do agree that if you had a short length cable between your conditioner/surge protector/whatever device and your amp/preamp/whatever device, and this cable was of high quality, thats good for two reasons:

A) shorter cable, less space for interference/noise/resistance/etc

B) high end cable, for less dollars

seems like we've already got one member posting that this does in fact work, so it would seem to me that its likely been done by at least one or more people, thus to answer your initial question: "people DO use short, high end cables to connect their top end gear"

to elaborate a bit more, and hopefully douse out the "but you've got miles and miles of crap in the walls and ground", yeah, you do, and most of that is actually decent quality cable, maybe not Virtual Dynamics, but its better than lamp cord most of the time, anyways, lets remember that the goal isn't to "add" or "enhance", its to remove as little as possible, since you can never improve the input, you want to impact it as little as you can (hence Accuphase sells amplifiers not based on ZERO THD, but based on the lowest THD possible in their output range), the same is true for power cables, so say the wiring from the power company to you is 6/10, why put 5/10 or 6/10 wiring in there, and continue degrading, when you could put 8/10 or 10/10, and maintain things at 6/10, or at least reduce the quality much less than if you used crappy wiring

thats basically the motivation behind high end cables (well, high end audio in general), how much can you manage to not lose between A and B?

cheers

 

[Kicksonrt66]

There's already a forum dedicated to non-logical discussion of cables and such, and it doesn't have "science" in the name.

 

[royalcrown]

As a reply to the OP:

Your suggestion doesn't necessarily rebuke the theory that cable believers espouse. I'm not saying that this theory is correct or incorrect, I'm simply applying your proposition to the theory and seeing how it meshes.

The argument goes as such: you have hundreds of feet of generic cable, and 6 feet of fancy cable. That fancy cable replaces what would otherwise be 6 feet of generic cable. Thus, that's 6 feet of improvement in the path. Putting just a 1 inch cable and having the rest be generic cable would only be an improvement of 1 inch, as opposed to an improvement of 6 feet - thus, the improvement won't be tit-for-tat. From what I know about the theory (and if I misinterpreted it, let me know), it's not so much that the cable filters out all of the garbage or somehow corrects the previous length of generic cable, but rather it limits the harm by 6 feet, which is apparently enough to make a difference.

A better question to ask would be: why not just rewire the entire house with fancy cable? Surely if 6 feet of 10k cable makes a difference, over 100 feet of even 100 dollar cable should make exponential differences by comparison. That's a question I've yet to hear an answer to, and I think it pokes a large hole in the theory from a falsification standpoint.

 

[Kicksonrt66]

Quote:

Originally Posted by royalcrown /img/forum/go_quote.gif As a reply to the OP: A better question to ask would be: why not just rewire the entire house with fancy cable? Surely if 6 feet of 10k cable makes a difference, over 100 feet of even 100 dollar cable should make exponential differences by comparison. That's a question I've yet to hear an answer to, and I think it pokes a large hole in the theory from a falsification standpoint.

The original post brought up the issue of potentially hundreds of miles of generic (actually, mostly aluminum) cable between your house and the power plant.

If you can hear the difference between 100 miles and 100 miles + 6 feet, then buying the gourmet power cable might be cost effective as it's cheaper than moving your house 6 feet closer to the power pole.

Or the concerned audiophile home buyer could buy a house close to the power plant to begin with and offer to pay extra for a direct silver cable connection.

WOO HOO!

 

[cegras]

I'm not sure. It's not like the more you transmit the power, the worse it gets. There's always boosters and whatnot (I'm not a EE, so I don't know how transmission lines are set up), so you can't just say that the farther you are from the generator, the worse it gets.

In theory then, if you took an audiophile from Toronto to Niagara falls, he should hear a clear difference.

 

[leveller1642]

Quote:

Originally Posted by obobskivich your idea is reasonable, from a reasonable perspective, but that would demand audio reproduction to be objective and follow the constraints of common sense reasoning, which it clearly is not, and generally does not,

I really don't want to enter the objectivist/subjectivist power cord argument , anymore than I want to the argue the non existence of a omnipresent omnipotent creator of the universe, but would like to commend gotchaforce for a highly amusing thread.

If you were really keen about audio reproduction, you'd invest in mains isolated power supply, ie deep cycle batteries and a high quality inverter/charger.

 

[gotchaforce]

Quote:

Originally Posted by royalcrown /img/forum/go_quote.gif As a reply to the OP: Your suggestion doesn't necessarily rebuke the theory that cable believers espouse. I'm not saying that this theory is correct or incorrect, I'm simply applying your proposition to the theory and seeing how it meshes. The argument goes as such: you have hundreds of feet of generic cable, and 6 feet of fancy cable. That fancy cable replaces what would otherwise be 6 feet of generic cable. Thus, that's 6 feet of improvement in the path. Putting just a 1 inch cable and having the rest be generic cable would only be an improvement of 1 inch, as opposed to an improvement of 6 feet - thus, the improvement won't be tit-for-tat. From what I know about the theory (and if I misinterpreted it, let me know), it's not so much that the cable filters out all of the garbage or somehow corrects the previous length of generic cable, but rather it limits the harm by 6 feet, which is apparently enough to make a difference. A better question to ask would be: why not just rewire the entire house with fancy cable? Surely if 6 feet of 10k cable makes a difference, over 100 feet of even 100 dollar cable should make exponential differences by comparison. That's a question I've yet to hear an answer to, and I think it pokes a large hole in the theory from a falsification standpoint.

I dont think thats a valid comparison... the extra 6 feet over 1" should make no difference, as long as the cable is there in some form, even if it were one nanometer, it should have the same ability to "improve" the sound.

I dont know why this was moved to sound science, my whole topic relies on people hearing differences in power cables... and how they have no reason to buy a 6 foot cable over 1" cable. It seems bringing ANY reason to the hocus pocus magic that is power cables results in it being deemed science.

Seriously people do what you want with your cables, but at least be a rational thinker about it and realize that you have NO reason to have anything longer than a 1" power cord with an extension on it consisting of the cables in your walls. Why would anyone want to say "I cannot find any flaws in your theory, but im going to keep paying for 6 feet power cables for no friggin reason. I also like the taste of glue and paste." unless they are irrational??

 

[Uncle Erik]

gotchaforce, have you seen "audiophile grade" fuses? According to manufacturers and believers, the material a fuse is made of plays a role in the sound. A typical fuse is under 1" and passes power, so it is (more or less) what you're referring to.