Journey to Power Cable Project for my Audio system

[Number1]

At this time I would like to identify a new law, (kind of like oldsmoboat law).

He/she who uses "truth" in his user name is invariably a snake oil vendor and or a conspiracy theory fan.



Back on topic.

I am going to replace one of my HDMI cables and I am thinking about creating a thread about it. Thread name would be:

Odyssey to 1080P HDMI Nirvana (2D Only).

In it we could discuss the aesthetic of various length and type of HDMI cables. I might even get some "counselling" from one or both of our audio gurus.

Yes/no, ban worthy?
It would pretty well be a parody thread.

[sdifox]

Originally Posted by AudioTruth

The audiophile spends $2000 on a power cable, and gets years worth of eargasms, while the skeptic spends years writing about power cables not giving eargasms. This is bad logic.

For audiophiles, cables making a difference is as obvious as Earth being round. Skeptics who claimed that Earth was flat, are the same skeptics today who claim cables make no difference. These types of skeptics have already made up their minds from the beginning, and they aren't open to the possibility that they could be wrong. In the future, this kind of unhealthy skepticism will be considered as a mental disorder, and there will even be mental institutions for them.

Well, oblate spheroid or oblate ellipsoid, but I guess round is as close as a cable guru can get.

[AudioTruth]

Originally Posted by Plugers

So....The audiophiles are going to give us all eargasms? I think I may have seen a video of this, of course the guy really didn't LOOK like an audiophile.

Yes, after the audiophiles have got so many eargasms, they want to share the experience with others. It is like losing your virginity, you want others to experience the same thing.

[AudioTruth]

Originally Posted by cheez

With stock cables, I will have to do some wire management then. Don't want them placed too close to each other.

Yes, it's good to separate the stock cables from each other. Noise can travel from one cable to another even if they aren't touching. I have learned this by ear.

Originally Posted by cheez

Patrick, please keep me updated. You can send update here, or at youtube via PM. I will send you my personal email address too later.


thanks,

cheez

Yes, I will keep you updated.

[cheez]

Originally Posted by gus6464

The Focals don't even have a Class A amp so the transducers are getting super dirty filthy power. That is impacting micro and macrodetail as well as holographic imaging.

Young man, you don't have to have a Class A amp to have audiophile level speaker. The Focal speaker already is known for wide stereo imaging. This model is well used by the professionals in their music studios. It's not my fault you are using the sub-$100 speaker set with WALMART grade powerstrip. Of course you would get bad sound. But you got used to it. That's understandable. And the benefit of cleaner power provided by high performance power cord is needed for all audio (and video) devices to improve sound. The reason why you are getting super dirty filthy power is because you are using a $9 powerstrip from Lowes or WALMART.

Originally Posted by AudioTruth

Air and humidity makes a difference to the sound, but only subtle. The audio system sounds different in the summer and winter.

Funny you mentioned that, cause I noticed differences in sound when the room was cold or very warm. I know the audio has impact on sound depending on whether as you described. Good thing you brought up.

[cheez]

Originally Posted by sdifox

Well, oblate spheroid or oblate ellipsoid, but I guess round is as close as a cable guru can get.

Young man, AudioTruth was implying that the earth isn't flat. You don't need to get nit picky. You are making a stupid argument. You picked those words from wikipedia. Copy and Paste. Typical nerds (with big arse pair of glasses) with glasses do.

[gus6464]

Originally Posted by cheez

Young man, you don't have to have a Class A amp to have audiophile level speaker. The Focal speaker already is known for wide stereo imaging. This model is well used by the professionals in their music studios. It's not my fault you are using the sub-$100 speaker set with WALMART grade powerstrip. Of course you would get bad sound. But you got used to it. That's understandable. And the benefit of cleaner power provided by high performance power cord is needed for all audio (and video) devices to improve sound. The reason why you are getting super dirty filthy power is because you are using a $9 powerstrip from Lowes or WALMART.

You don't want to know what speakers I have. Hell the tweeters cost more than both your Focals But then again I spend my money where it really matters, the speakers and the room.

[cheez]

Originally Posted by gus6464

You don't want to know what speakers I have. Hell the tweeters cost more than both your Focals But then again I spend my money where it really matters, the speakers and the room.

I don't know young man... Your speaking manner (with the use of slang) gives me an impression that you own a box of WALMART-grade speakers and receiver.
Speakers matter, but cabling is whole another that you have not experienced in.

[sdifox]

Originally Posted by cheez

Young man, AudioTruth was implying that the earth isn't flat. You don't need to get nit picky. You are making a stupid argument. You picked those words from wikipedia. Copy and Paste. Typical nerds (with big arse pair of glasses) with glasses do.

Pretty sure you are the young one here. I thought all audiophiles nitpick? I mean, elevating your power bar off the floor made a difference, why wouldn't you be more specific with the shape of the Earth? It's a much bigger difference.

[nsafreak]

Originally Posted by cheez

I don't know young man... Your speaking manner (with the use of slang) gives me an impression that you own a box of WALMART-grade speakers and receiver.
Speakers matter, but cabling is whole another that you have not experienced in.

You'd be very surprised as to what people in this forum have in their systems. You seem to be under the impression that a lot of us have cheap systems with cheap wiring jobs. I would venture to say that the opposite is true and a lot of the folks that frequent this section of the forums actually have some very nice setups. For example take crab's setup here: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost...&postcount=670 . Which I'm reasonably certain blows your system somewhere several zipcodes away. Sdifox knows his stuff as well and if I recall correctly he does indeed have a very nice set of speakers that I've wished I could afford myself a time or two. You keep thinking though that he doesn't know what he's talking about all you like though.

Frankly I wish YoYo had the time to deal with you and give you a nice factual reaming about power & speaker cables.

[birthdaymonkey]

I actually thought Cheez was a genuine believer based on his previous threads, but alas this one makes his trollin' plain.

I guess I'll have to cancel my pending order for Audioengine A2s and the $1000 Angel iPod cable.

[AudioTruth]

Originally Posted by nsafreak

You'd be very surprised as to what people in this forum have in their systems. You seem to be under the impression that a lot of us have cheap systems with cheap wiring jobs. I would venture to say that the opposite is true and a lot of the folks that frequent this section of the forums actually have some very nice setups. For example take crab's setup here: http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost...&postcount=670 . Which I'm reasonably certain blows your system somewhere several zipcodes away. Sdifox knows his stuff as well and if I recall correctly he does indeed have a very nice set of speakers that I've wished I could afford myself a time or two. You keep thinking though that he doesn't know what he's talking about all you like though.

Frankly I wish YoYo had the time to deal with you and give you a nice factual reaming about power & speaker cables.

A bigger system equals in worse sound overall. This is because each component generates noise that infects the rest of the system. I used a big $250,000 system before and got worse sound than a minimalist system for $1000. The goal of audio is to get the lowest wattage possible, while giving bit-perfect output. This doesn't require a lot of processing power.

I used a lot of harddrives before, unplugging them one at a time gave a noticeable improvement in microdetail and silkiness. The difference between 2 and 1 harddrives was huge. Then I switched from 7200 rpm to 5400 rpm (Green Power) and got a big improvement. Then I switched to SSD and got another improvement. I improved the system further by removing the SSD and running everything from RAM, huge improvement! I went down to 4 watts power draw at playback and this resulted in the silkiest sound with the most microdetail.

In every single case, the lowest wattage resulted in better sound. I have Adam A5 studio monitors, I used the "better" model A7 before, but because it uses higher power consumption it resulted in worse sound.

I used a dCS stack with SACD playback and DSD upsampling ($31,000+), it was the worst thing I bought for my audio system. The upsampling processors in the entire stack took 100+ watts! I got better sound with both Benchmark DAC-1, and EMU 0404 USB DAC.
I switched directly from dCS Elgar Plus DAC into EMU 0404 USB DAC ($200) and got better sound overall. The EMU has some edginess and emptiness, but I solved this with crystals to give the same silkiness as dCS, now the EMU is better in every way.

[nsafreak]

Originally Posted by AudioTruth

A bigger system equals in worse sound overall. This is because each component generates noise that infects the rest of the system. I used a big $250,000 system before and got worse sound than a minimalist system for $1000. The goal of audio is to get the lowest wattage possible, while giving bit-perfect output. This doesn't require a lot of processing power.

I used a lot of harddrives before, unplugging them one at a time gave a noticeable improvement in microdetail and silkiness. The difference between 2 and 1 harddrives was huge. Then I switched from 7200 rpm to 5400 rpm (Green Power) and got a big improvement. Then I switched to SSD and got another improvement. I improved the system further by removing the SSD and running everything from RAM, huge improvement! I went down to 4 watts power draw at playback and this resulted in the silkiest sound with the most microdetail.

In every single case, the lowest wattage resulted in better sound. I have Adam A5 studio monitors, I used the "better" model A7 before, but because it uses higher power consumption it resulted in worse sound.

I used a dCS stack with SACD playback and DSD upsampling ($31,000+), it was the worst thing I bought for my audio system. The upsampling processors in the entire stack took 100+ watts! I got better sound with both Benchmark DAC-1, and EMU 0404 USB DAC.
I switched directly from dCS Elgar Plus DAC into EMU 0404 USB DAC ($200) and got better sound overall. The EMU has some edginess and emptiness, but I solved this with crystals to give the same silkiness as dCS, now the EMU is better in every way.

The amount of utter nonsense in your post just gave me a good laugh. Thanks, it's good to start out the day with a nice and healthy laugh . I'm still not 100% certain if you're just the biggest troll on this board or if you actually believe the snake oil sales pitch that you're trying to sell. I'll tell you this much though, the only people that are buying the sales pitch are yourself and cheez.

[AudioTruth]

Originally Posted by nsafreak

The amount of utter nonsense in your post just gave me a good laugh. Thanks, it's good to start out the day with a nice and healthy laugh . I'm still not 100% certain if you're just the biggest troll on this board or if you actually believe the snake oil sales pitch that you're trying to sell. I'll tell you this much though, the only people that are buying the sales pitch are yourself and cheez.

It's a free upgrade, no "sales pitch".
It's easy to try this yourself, simply unplug the harddrives, or put them in sleep mode.
It's also important to plug the display to another outlet far from the audio system. Or just turn it off when you listen. Each step may be too subtle for the skeptics, but when adding them all together, the improvement becomes huge.

[AudioTruth]

I forgot to mention the best upgrade ever, it's converting all lossless formats into WAV. It becomes both silkier and clearer with more microdetail and fullness. FLAC has edgy and empty sound that is fatiguing, I couldn't listen to it because it gave me a headache, especially during winter.
I noticed that FLAC used 1% CPU power and WAV used 0%. The unpacking that FLAC does adds noise into the system.
This is similar to the upsampling processors in the dCS stack. It adds noise into the system.
It is sad that people spend more money for worse sound, when they can have crazy eargasms for very low prices.

[blackangst1]

Originally Posted by AudioTruth

A bigger system equals in worse sound overall. This is because each component generates noise that infects the rest of the system. I used a big $250,000 system before and got worse sound than a minimalist system for $1000. The goal of audio is to get the lowest wattage possible, while giving bit-perfect output. This doesn't require a lot of processing power.

I used a lot of harddrives before, unplugging them one at a time gave a noticeable improvement in microdetail and silkiness. The difference between 2 and 1 harddrives was huge. Then I switched from 7200 rpm to 5400 rpm (Green Power) and got a big improvement. Then I switched to SSD and got another improvement. I improved the system further by removing the SSD and running everything from RAM, huge improvement! I went down to 4 watts power draw at playback and this resulted in the silkiest sound with the most microdetail.

In every single case, the lowest wattage resulted in better sound. I have Adam A5 studio monitors, I used the "better" model A7 before, but because it uses higher power consumption it resulted in worse sound.

I used a dCS stack with SACD playback and DSD upsampling ($31,000+), it was the worst thing I bought for my audio system. The upsampling processors in the entire stack took 100+ watts! I got better sound with both Benchmark DAC-1, and EMU 0404 USB DAC.
I switched directly from dCS Elgar Plus DAC into EMU 0404 USB DAC ($200) and got better sound overall. The EMU has some edginess and emptiness, but I solved this with crystals to give the same silkiness as dCS, now the EMU is better in every way.

edit:

Whatever sounds best to you man.

[blackangst1]

Originally Posted by AudioTruth

I forgot to mention the best upgrade ever, it's converting all lossless formats into WAV. It becomes both silkier and clearer with more microdetail and fullness. FLAC has edgy and empty sound that is fatiguing, I couldn't listen to it because it gave me a headache, especially during winter.
I noticed that FLAC used 1% CPU power and WAV used 0%. The unpacking that FLAC does adds noise into the system.
This is similar to the upsampling processors in the dCS stack. It adds noise into the system.
It is sad that people spend more money for worse sound, when they can have crazy eargasms for very low prices.

First of all, are you listening to compressed or uncompressed FLAC? Second of all, do you know FLAC and WAV are bit for bit identical? Have you done ABX testing on both files? Have you done jitter testing on both files? Did you know when playing on a PC (which it sounds like you are) in both cases the files are unpacked into a raw PCM stream?

edit: removed derogatory comments. Trying to be civil in a trollish thread.

[blackangst1]

AudioTruth/cheez/sdifox:

how many of you are serious enough about wanting clean power that you have installed a DC rectifier? Afterall, it will give you cleanest, purest, most constant power. Period. Ive seen posts about $250,000 worth of gear, but no mention of DC rectified power. Why is that?

[sdifox]

Originally Posted by blackangst1

AudioTruth/cheez/sdifox:

how many of you are serious enough about wanting clean power that you have installed a DC rectifier? Afterall, it will give you cleanest, purest, most constant power. Period. Ive seen posts about $250,000 worth of gear, but no mention of DC rectified power. Why is that?

Hey hey hey do not put me in the same group as those two.

[blackangst1]

Originally Posted by sdifox

Hey hey hey do not put me in the same group as those two.

*shrug* why not? Youre the one that brought $800-$8000 UPS's into the thread.

Originally Posted by sdifox

sure, cheapass ups put out dirty power, but a good one like a Tripp Lite smartOnline puts out pure sine wave. Cleaner than the power from the outside.

http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/model.cfm?txtModelID=3652

[sdifox]

Originally Posted by blackangst1

*shrug* why not? Youre the one that brought $800-$8000 UPS's into the thread.

Just to counter the idiotic argument that power cable can clean up power

[gus6464]

sdifox was just being sarcastic lol. cheez and audiotruth are the only ones posting idiotic comments.

[blotto]

Besides, a UPS also has the benefit of added protection from power events. The only benefit of the $2300 power cord is it's most likely sturdy enough that you could hang yourself with it when you realize that you just spent $2300 on a power cord.

[Pacfanweb]

Originally Posted by blackangst1

*shrug* why not? Youre the one that brought $800-$8000 UPS's into the thread.

He was trolling the trolls.

I was a bit concerned that those two were actually serious about the power cable thing, and all the other nonsensical horse manure they've been posting, but they outed themselves beyond all doubt in the last page or two.

Nobody is that stupid.

[AudioTruth]

Originally Posted by blackangst1

First of all, are you listening to compressed or uncompressed FLAC? Second of all, do you know FLAC and WAV are bit for bit identical? Have you done ABX testing on both files? Have you done jitter testing on both files? Did you know when playing on a PC (which it sounds like you are) in both cases the files are unpacked into a raw PCM stream?

edit: removed derogatory comments. Trying to be civil in a trollish thread.

Yes, they are bit for bit identical, except FLAC is like a zip file that needs to be unpacked during playback. This unpacking process adds noise into the system. I have done two blind tests with interesting results.

1) Put the WAV and FLAC files into a Foobar playlist, pressed random. 99% score.

2) Used Foobar's ABX test, didn't hear a difference. I searched for the reason. I discovered that before the test started, both the files were converted into WAV and placed inside a testing folder, so I was comparing WAV against WAV, and heard no difference.

This shows that I'm not delusional. Because in cases where there was no difference, I couldn't hear a difference.