Power Cable Question

If someone can null a lathed & unlathed CD, (see Rob's post above), there cannot be any difference. Surely you can see that?

But no, you can hear a difference. So, you choose to ignore absolutely irrefutable evidence that lathing is pure, unadulterated foo. That makes you either a fool, or a charlatan.

Chris

You decide.

 

Cables ehh that old nut again
my background is that I worked in the generation and transmission of Electricity for 25 years, my father was a VERY highly regarded senior Electrical engineer for the C.E.G.B for nearly 50 years.
I believe I approach things with an open mind and cables have always been one area which I have been heavily involved with over many years both at work and at home.
My first question for those who think all cables are the same is why do large cable companies spend millions every year on research into cable technology?
secondly, Why do cable companies spend huge sums of money producing so many different cables? lets face it if they all did the same thing then why manufacture so many different cables ?
why do they go to a great deal of trouble trying to deal with rfi/emi problems ? and why do they use and manufacture special cables for use in Hospitals and other areas sensitive to electrical "contamination" ?
OK so the answer is because cable companies know that certain problems affect certain situations and as such a cable needs to be up to the job. no consider this if this is the case then even to the average layman the reason for this means that not all cable is created equal yes ? and if that is the case certain HiFi companies have also spent plenty on trying different cables,wasn't Mark Levinson insistant that a certain Belden cable was better for his equiptment?
Our UK mains supply is at best a compromise and also once it reaches our house it is compromised even futher, what's more when we get to Electronics that are very sensitive, especialy to things like RFI and EMI then we are going to see differences from one house/system to the next.
So do cables make a difference? yes of course they do
Do some cables sound better than others, well suffice to say they sound different and as we all hear things in a slightly different way I can't answer that question.
when it comes to mains "conditioning" there are companies out there who have spent serious wads of dosh comming up with ways of giving us "cleaner" power
I know many theories and laws of physics etc that say certain things "can't" be possible etc but then I always remember one thing, there is always an exception to the rule :rds2:
Cables do make a difference, I can say this because i've heard it many times over the last 30 years of messing with electronics, and if you notice most HiFi manufactures actually say they don't include cables to allow the user to choose their own as it's down to personal taste.
So do I use special Mains cables ? yes I do, mostley made by me and quite simple and using simple principles, i.e. shielded decent quality cable which I might add isn't very expensive, by adding braiding etc you can make it look expensive but mostly I would say my mains cables cost less than £15 each.
my advice therefore is give em a try, if you hear a change and you like it then get them, don't spend £'s on them, I personally don't believe that a £200 mains cable and a £50 mains cable sound different enough to make it worth while

 

is it not that the most precise conductivity in audio signal trans mission either source rca's or loudspeaker cables i 99.99999 % copper?

 

From what I heard with two lathed cd's they 'can' make a difference, I do not assume that they always do. I think it's probably down to the concentricity of the edge of the disc to the centre hole, with poorly edged discs being unbalanced and requiring more servo intervention to steady their rotation and track them.

I think in some players that extra modulation of the power supply may fold back into the analogue outs, in some it might not, it may even fold back into the digital outs in some players.

I'd be very interested to see if the digital out from my old 840 nulled every time with lathed and un-lathed discs on the analogue outs. if it could be nulled then i'd have to accept I was wrong.

 

That sounds like the player is of poor quality. However the manufacturer of the lathe doesnt claim it "rounds" the disc. At least they never use too last time I came across it.

It all the spurious stray light that it fixes!!!! :zzzz:

Allegedly

 

I don't for one minute believe there is any mechanism by which stray light could make any difference. But I have seen how much less work is done by the servo to track a lathed disc than another identical and poorly pressed disc.

 

Yeah I must admit I have seen a few discs that wobble a fair bit. All of them play okay as far as I can tell, but some do it more than others. You can hear the 'swish, swish, swish' sound sometimes. I'd rather rip it and burn a new copy than buy a lathe though.

 

No, perfectly normal, and it wasn't difficult.

I can do the same with cables, even yours I'll wager.

 

If this wobbling around and additional servo action (which can happen) is putting noise onto the PSU rails, well you'd think there would be some real testing so show it by now.
And again it only matters if the output of the player/tramsport is different.

That's the problem with hi-fi - too many assumptions.
Reminds me of the old idea to disconnect power leds because they dirty the supply lines.
Well perhaps, at an infinitesimally low level, but has anyone ever shown that this appears on the output?
No.

 

rip it and burn a new copy- if indeed the blank is any better centred, yes.

 

You'd think that- at least if they wanted people to know that it worked that way. Much easier to sell them some bullshit refraction concept than run the risk of them just adding power rail isolation to the servo board for a couple of quid and saving £350 on a lathe.


You'll love this...

So i got those cables back from Mark and re-inserted them, and Now I cannot tell them apart from any of my other cables. (time to clean all my sockets perhaps?)

 

for all it's worth i just found in stock a pair of bran new nu-vita rca's but they are 10 meter length, might cut them up to 1m lengths and let them out for trial.

 

Buy a good quality mains plug (toughplug are about the best and about £3-£5). Then buy a schurter or similar connector to plug into your hi-fi (less than £13) and go to your local electrical store and buy some LAPP OLFLEX shielded mains cable for next to nothing.
Screw them all together and you have a cable, build quality comparable with anything on the market, for less then £20.
Does it make your hi-fi sound any better, probably not, but it does give you a sense of smug satisfaction that you now have a few hundred quid in your back pocket to improve your hi-fi by buying more music.

Just my two penenth worth (and i make hi-fi cables as a business!!!)

 

ah ...some sensible discussion

on the lathed disc .....

I think we may get more answers if we can recognise that something is happening ...sq has seen the servo operating on none lathed disc..assuming identical to the lathed disc ...

if the brain of the cd is having to operate the servo then less of its attention [by definition] is being used to read the disc . If resources are being approprated elsewhere ...then its not a giant step to think this may have some impact on the final sound .


oflex classic cy 100 makes a outstanding mains cable for pennies ....you can buy the cable on the roll from rs or find a dealer that will sell off the reel ...

get a good quality three pin plug ...make certain any contact surface are smooth and clean ..also any edges are sharp .....clean the solder off the fuse caps so your left with the copper caps exposed ..

find a good quality iec plug ...oyides or similar ....dress the cable so that the shield drains to the ground/earth at the wall end of the cable.

go borrow a super audiophool mega jobbie ...and then listen to the two against each other .....


The trouble with al this hifi stuff where one person say one thing and another says the contary is that , I'm old enough to remember when the stuff thats now taken for granted ie stands or feet over casters was as contentious as the things being discussed here .

A simple rule .......that may pay dividends

if you can hear something, it doesn't mean it doesnot exist ...it just means you can't hear it.

what you should then ask is why can someone else hear this ? this will then lead to an open minded positive discussion.

If on the other hand your of the opinion that because you can hear something ..therefore it can't exist ie

la la la la la la la ...I'm not listening ..la la la la la

its no great suprise people will get the wrong idea about your level of cognative function.

 

Also if you hear something it does not mean that it does exists!

Though i imagine divining it would be enough scientific proof.

 

My CD player doesn't have a brain inside, I checked. That's just creepy Zanash, what sort of mods have you been doing?!

 

Come on guys, let's be nice to each other, or at least treat each other as a person.

 

Surely no one is denying that better power supplies with better separation of power rails is better crappy supplies where everything runs from one rail.

I don't for a minute assume all servos fold back into the rest of the power supply for every cd player, but mine sounded like it did. I should have measured that..

Too late now.

 

It is a massive step without any evidence, and you still don't have any.

You cannot make valid links between brain activity (complex fuzzy operations) and the operation of microprocessors performing a fixed and defined task.

 

Two things are in question.

- Audibility and measurability.

A crappy PSU that doesn't impact the above suddenly becomes a perfectly good PSU for the circuit being driven.