The Truth About Interconnects and Cables - page 7
Other (Cheap) Things You Can Do
I had an e-mail from one of my regular readers, who was telling me that his apartment is wired using aluminium cable. This is (apparently) no longer acceptable in the US , but the fact that it was ever allowed at all is quite amazing. He discovered that he was having mains problems, so rather than "invest" in high-end power cables, he simply decided to replace the wall outlets with new ones, and re-terminate the aluminium house wiring. This in itself is not easy, because aluminium forms an oxide ( very quickly) which is an insulator, and terminations need to be airtight - literally - to stop this from happening.
Aluminium also "flows" under pressure, so to terminate it properly needs a connector that applies constant pressure over a prolonged time - either that, or the terminations need to be tightened every couple of years. This can even happen with copper - many is the time I have found wall outlets where the connector screws were loose enough to allow the cable to move, this was not through negligence but simply the passage of time.
I quote (verbatim) from the e-mail -
About the power lead, it's a sad world. Actually, my apartment has aluminum wiring. It is deemed fire-hazard these days, but it's an old building and they're not going to re-do the wiring. I had to replace three receptacles because the contact points of the aluminum wires slowly burnt away and left the sockets unusable. Whenever I plugged in a high-power equipment, it'd crackle, lose power and cause even more contact point to burn away.
In that sense, buying a new $3 socket and getting it freshly connected to the mains wire helps HECK of a lot more than buying a $650 mains cable. As an added bonus, I get fresh copper socket holes. I'd think that helps a lot more than replacing a standard cable with a silver super-duper cable.
I couldn't agree more. This is a sensible approach, and does not cost a great deal. In addition, his apartment is (marginally!) less of a fire hazard than before, and the use of an expensive mains lead would not have fixed the underlying problem. Perhaps a few more people could adopt this sensible attitude and actually get some real (as opposed to imaginary or just "cover-up") improvements.
Bottom Line on Power Cables
I am still waiting for a "high-end" power lead manufacturer to supply me with some scientific proof of the advantages of their cable, and how they improve the sound. I have asked, and have not received the information. Nor do I expect to, since they cannot provide any sort of proof because they don't have any.
The last paragraphs of the above tell more of the truth of the matter than any high-end power lead maker ever will. The same (but to a lesser degree outside the US ) benefits can be had from anyone who has old wiring and wall outlets regardless of where they live. Even in my own home, I have completely rewired the mains, because the old wiring had perished insulation, and all the sockets were worn out. The difference was not audible, but at least I know that an electrical fault is unlikely.
Conclusion
Respected designers simulate, build, measure and modify until they are satisfied that the performance is as expected. Then, and only then, the amplifier (or whatever it might be) is auditioned in a proper listening test (as opposed to a lab speaker), and perhaps only the designer listens to it in the first instance. If the sound is as expected, then others will usually be invited to listen as well. Comments are made, and if it is felt that they are valid (a sufficient number of listeners made the same remarks, for example), then further modifications will be made, more tests, more listening, until everyone is satisfied that the measured and audible performance is in agreement. The measurements are available on the colour glossies, and are considered a part of the equipment - this is the specification, against which others can be compared.
Compare this to the snake oil vendors. As an example, they buy perfectly ordinary cable from an established manufacturer, clad it in some fancy heatshrink tubing, write their sales pitch, and sell it. They might actually bother to listen to it as well, but there isn't much point, since it is the same wire as used by others anyway. Do you see specifications, measurements, or other factual data? No! What you see on the colour glossies is a sales pitch, aimed directly at your emotional responses. There are no means for direct comparison, not a mention of anything that will help you to make a reasonable and informed decision as to which "thing" is (or might be) better than the other.
Non blind listening tests are flawed - and especially so when conducted by a dealer. Don't expect that the levels will be precisely matched, but absolutely expect the salesthing to tell you what to hear - not exactly a fair comparison.
When only emotions are allowed to make the decision on technical equipment, we can be fairly certain that we will make the wrong choice, other than by chance. Having spent all that money, no-one, and I mean no-one, will be willing to admit that they were defrauded, robbed or deceived. The survival instinct takes over, and we hear exactly what we expect to - whether it exists ot not.
In the long term, the subjectivist approach will cost you a lot of money, and possibly yield a system that is less hi-fi than something from a department store. A review without technical tests is without substance or meaning, and nearly all descriptions about amplifier sound should be taken with a large dose of salt (possibly epsom).
Claims that power leads and interconnects will magically transform the sound of your system are false and misleading in the extreme. The various system components may be influenced by some combinations, but a well designed system should not care.
The current impasse between the scientific and subjectivist camps is unlikely to be resolved in the near future, because as politics and religion have shown over the centuries, people will believe what they want to, despite any evidence that may be offered to show that they are misguided or just plain wrong.
There is great difficulty defining the quality of an audio experience - you can't draw a picture to show what something sounded like. In addition, our acoustical memory is far more fleeting and more readily fooled than visual memory. It is much easier to visualise what the Sydney Harbour Bridge looks like than to recall all but the basic details of a musical performance.
From Douglas Self -
It has been universally recognised for many years in experimental psychology, particularly in experiments about perception, that people tend to perceive what they want to perceive. This is often called the 'experimenter expectancy' effect; it is more subtle and insidious than it sounds, and the history of science is littered with the wrecked careers of those who failed to guard against it. Such self-deception has most often occurred in fields like biology, where although the raw data may be numerical, there is no real mathematical theory to check it against.
When the only 'results' are vague subjective impressions, the danger is clearly much greater, no matter how absolute the integrity of the experimenter. Thus in psychological work great care is necessary in the use of impartial observers, double-blind techniques, and rigorous statistical tests for significance. The vast majority of Subjectivist writings wholly ignore these precautions, with predictable results. In a few cases properly controlled listening tests been done, and at the time of writing all have resulted in different amplifiers sounding indistinguishable. I believe the conclusion is inescapable that experimenter expectancy has played a dominant role in the growth of Subjectivism.
It is notable that in Subjectivist audio the 'correct' answer is always the more expensive or inconvenient one. Electronics is rarely as simple as that. A major improvement is more likely to be linked with a new circuit topology or new type of semiconductor, than with mindlessly specifying more expensive components of the same type; cars do not go faster with platinum pistons.
All the above notwithstanding, most audio designers will still tend to accept (however reluctantly) some of the subjectivist propaganda, if only to be able to extract some of the obviously serious money that would otherwise go elsewhere. There is nothing wrong with this in principle, but where this happens, you will almost invariably get what you pay for, and the equipment's performance will be (hopefully) satisfying to both camps. Just as likely is that the subjectivists will determine that this same piece of equipment is hopelessly inadequate in all respects, despite the fact that it has zero distortion of any kind, and a frequency response from DC to daylight. (A good quality standard interconnect comes to mind!)
References
- Wireless World, July 1988 - D. Self 'Science and Subjectivism in Audio' (See also The Self Site )
- The Audio Pages, ESP, Impedance
- The Audio Pages, ESP, Bi-amplification - Not Quite Magic (But Close)
- Stereophile, Sept 1995 - R. Harley 'Review of Cary CAD-300SEI Single-Ended Triode Amplifier'
- BBC Engineering Monograph No 52 - 'Stereophony & The effect of crosstalk between left and right channels'
Many Thanks to Rod Elliott from Elliott Sound Products for allowing us to republish this excellent article. We encourage you to check out Mr. Elliots very informative website and perhaps partake in some of the DIY projects that he offers.
