Mains cable.. seen the light????

james n posted:

The Strat (Fender) posted:

Very disappointed. I was in Waitrose last night and from what I could see the power lines on the back of their freezers are no different to the type that Aldi use 

You can get Cryo'd Lemon Drizzle Cake - that must be good ?

Ah, so that's why some frozen lemon drizzle cakes taste better than others - it's how well they've been cryoed!

I agree that not all linear power supplies are better than all SMPSs. It is also true that not all SMPSs are created equally. It appears the SMPS on the UnitiServe is indeed a decent one. However I still heard an improvement when a decent cuddly toy linear supply replaced it.

For £23 complete, the SMPS supplied with the GS105 Prosafe Gigabit Netgear switch (that is £23 for switch and SMPS) must be built to a cost. I suspect (but have no data ) that any noise generated (or induced) by the switch could be rather readily injected into the music Ethernet network as the switch itself is a fundamental connection in that network. So I took a £50 (IIRC) punt and substituted the cheap SMPS supplied with the Netgear switch with a better quality SMPS with claims of noise cancelling technology (iFi iPower model) and things sounded better. If you search back on here you can read how it sounded better to me.

Placebo effect? Possibly. If it sounds better in my head then it sounds better. Good value IMHO. Anyway this is the only data and evidence I have.

Having now consumed several lemon drizzle cakes in the interests of scientific advancement the mere mention of cake makes me a little queasy. So can we please drop the LDC references? Cheers.

swps do a good job for a wide range of relative cheap applications .  some of the ones used for industrial application have excellent qualities and this type is being used in power amp applications.  Linn have been using them for  years in quality audio equipment, The advantages fit the use in one box solutions ,Ive recent heard the new cyrus 1 amp that sounded very good which uses a smps

What's all this got to do with cake?

Or even mains cables?  

The Strat (Fender) posted:

What's all this got to do with cake?

Cake? Seems some here want to have it, eat it, and say it tastes better than anyone else's.

Crumbs...... all this talk of cake....it's making me hungry... 

joerand posted:

The Strat (Fender) posted:

What's all this got to do with cake?

Cake? Seems some here want to have it, eat it, and say it tastes better than anyone else's.

No, that part's just expectation bias!

Oh - just had a look at Mrs Strat's majimix.  It's hard wired - can't upgrade the cable.  

nigelb posted:

To the sceptics - Data, you want data and evidence? Bu**er off and get it yourself with your own ears. 

Ah yes.  Experts. Authorities. Specialists. People who know stuff....

Who needs "data" or "evidence" now that we are in the post fact world?  

Mrs Wogan's lemon drizzle cake posted:

nigelb posted:

To the sceptics - Data, you want data and evidence? Bu**er off and get it yourself with your own ears. 

Ah yes.  Experts. Authorities. Specialists. People who know stuff....

Who needs "data" or "evidence" now that we are in the post fact world?  

Maybe you should organise a bake-off?

Mrs Wogan's lemon drizzle cake posted:

nigelb posted:

To the sceptics - Data, you want data and evidence? Bu**er off and get it yourself with your own ears. 

Ah yes.  Experts. Authorities. Specialists. People who know stuff....

Who needs "data" or "evidence" now that we are in the post fact world?  

Difficult to accept it seems but people don't want engage with you -- probably because they don't want to waste their time on you when they could enjoy their music instead....

ChrisSU posted:

Mrs Wogan's lemon drizzle cake posted:

nigelb posted:

To the sceptics - Data, you want data and evidence? Bu**er off and get it yourself with your own ears. 

Ah yes.  Experts. Authorities. Specialists. People who know stuff....

Who needs "data" or "evidence" now that we are in the post fact world?  

Maybe you should organise a bake-off?

I did try to organise a double-blind cake tasting but it was shunned,  since it removes the power of suggestion and has a frustrating inability to confirm the cakephiles prior prejudices.

Mrs Wogan's lemon drizzle cake posted:

nigelb posted:

To the sceptics - Data, you want data and evidence? Bu**er off and get it yourself with your own ears. 

Ah yes.  Experts. Authorities. Specialists. People who know stuff....

Who needs "data" or "evidence" now that we are in the post fact world?  

I truly know the mechanism by which the starch in the lemon drizzle cake goes stale (if you don't eat it in time) as that was my area of research!
And the only people actually in the metaphorical 'post fact' world are a bunch of deluded politicians and their cronies - there are still plenty trying to live in the 'pre-enlightenment' world though.

I remember the days when people wanted to improve their HI FI by replacing the source, amp or speakers, now it's mains cables. How times have changed.

Mrs Wogan's lemon drizzle cake posted:

No quarter posted:

Who cares HOW it does,as long as it DOES

Lots of people care actually, including The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the UK's regulator of advertising who upheld a complaint against a company selling £1200 quid kettle leads which made absolutely no discernible difference to sound quality.

That's not true! I tried one and the whistle from my kettle was far more musical with the £1200 cable

Richard 2000 posted:

Mrs Wogan's lemon drizzle cake posted:

No quarter posted:

Who cares HOW it does,as long as it DOES

Lots of people care actually, including The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the UK's regulator of advertising who upheld a complaint against a company selling £1200 quid kettle leads which made absolutely no discernible difference to sound quality.

That's not true! I tried one and the whistle from my kettle was far more musical with the £1200 cable

heh.  Well worth the money then eh?

Super posted:

I remember the days when people wanted to improve their HI FI by replacing the source, amp or speakers, now it's mains cables. How times have changed.

In my view posh cables - which I'll confess to owning - are the icing on the cake, but you should get the cake right first. So get the source, amp and speakers right and then optimise with cables if you feel the desire to. You can't polish a turd. 

Hungryhalibut posted:

Super posted:

I remember the days when people wanted to improve their HI FI by replacing the source, amp or speakers, now it's mains cables. How times have changed.

In my view posh cables - which I'll confess to owning - are the icing on the cake, but you should get the cake right first. So get the source, amp and speakers right and then optimise with cables if you feel the desire to. You can't polish a turd. 

You can if it's fossilised dinosaur poo!

I have a linn/naim six pack isobarik system with super caps. To replace the the leads with naims power line cables would cost me a small fortune, a risk i'm not willing to take or to justify.

I would agree with those posters who have advised on taking measures to improve the mains before spending large sums on upgrading the system cables.
I have long had an interest in this area and have experimented over the years with different approaches all of which brought sonic gains that could not always be easily explained.
Many many moons ago HFN published an article by Ben Duncan The Mains Explained on which I based my experiments leading me to have a dedicated consumer unit fitted with star earthed radial circuits feeding the individual components of my current Naim system.
There are a number of reasons why this approach is so effective, not always easily explained or understood, but in the main (no pun intended) using a dedicated consumer unit removes the HiFi supply from the domestic ring main which is always "polluted" by domestic white goods which impart interference and unwanted "noise" on to the domestic ring. Large ring circuits act like large RF aerials and pull in an enormous amount of RFI which we all know degrades audio. This is easily demonstrated for owners of Naim equipment where Naim state in their product manuals that transformer hum may be noticed, that this is due to RFI on the mains and not a fault with the equipment. With a dedicated consumer unit my transformers do not hum.
Some like to install a dedicated spur from the existing consumer unit which does improve matters to a certain degree but still does not fully separate the audio mains from the domestic mains. I once used a dedicated spur which improved sonics but I still heard an alarming thump through the speakers when the washing machine was on a drying cycle.
II spent £800 on having a sympathetic electrical engineer (finding one that understands and doesn't think your barking mad is another story) install a dedicated consumer unit and radial circuits based on the article published in HFNRW. I can honestly say it iis the best sound per pound "upgrade" I have ever made. Compared to connecting the system to the domestic ring main, the sound before was veiled and muddled, on the dedicated supply the sound is completely opened up with space and air around iinstruments and unbelievable transparency particularly rendering vocals even when way back in a dense noisy mix easily iintelligible. The whole is just so more dynamic, lively and full of musical verve. Systen performance is also so much more consistent with for example less of the phenomenon where a HiFi system sounds better later at night.
The difference is easy to hear on even lower fi equipment such as a Denon RCD M39 one box system and in two completely different homes and locations.
Based on my empirical experiences, I am often bemused that "audiophiles" are happy to enthusiastically and open mindedly spend fortunes on HiFi equipment and cables but scoff at, or totally disregard, any notion of ensuring that which drives the HiFi system i.e the domestic mains can have any affect or be improved upon. Seems a bit like buying a high performance car and being content to run it on any crappy old fuel source.
If its not breaking forum rules I will be happy to email a pdf of the Ben Duncan article to anyone interested

Super posted:

I remember the days when people wanted to improve their HI FI by replacing the source, amp or speakers, now it's mains cables. How times have changed.

Yup.  Replacing source, amp or speakers and focusing on improving room acoustics are all worthy pursuits.  Naim and others produce great kit that provide some excellent and worthwhile upgrade paths.

I suspect part of what we are seeing here though is that "tweakers" are rapidly approaching the point diminishing returns, and so begin to focus on pseudoscience and magical thinking to "open up the sound stage" etc, using babble and jargon in order to justify paying £1000 quid for a kettle lead.

Richard,  One observation...

Transformer hum isn't from RFI (that's far too high a frequency to cause hum):  It's either the inherent nature of that particular transformer (all toroidal transformers hum, they just vary in loudness); or if caused by mains, it's related to asymmetric mains waveform and the resulting magnetostriction that occurs.

Huge posted:

Hungryhalibut posted:

Super posted:

I remember the days when people wanted to improve their HI FI by replacing the source, amp or speakers, now it's mains cables. How times have changed.

In my view posh cables - which I'll confess to owning - are the icing on the cake, but you should get the cake right first. So get the source, amp and speakers right and then optimise with cables if you feel the desire to. You can't polish a turd. 

You can if it's fossilised dinosaur poo!

Or you could soft roll it in glitter !