he Design Philosophy Question: How can 1 metre of specialist OFC high grade copper mains cable possibly make a difference after the effect of the several miles of high voltage low grade national grid mains cable and the several hundred metres of low grade mains cable from the substation to your house, let alone the standard 2.5mm2 copper ring main in your walls?
Answer: Well it can't! We believe High grade OFC cables make little to no difference at all (apart from excessive Cost and Price). Additionally, we have tested silver plated mains plugs and have found them to offer little to the quality of the cable except again a huge price increase.
Tell us again Rik, what are your mains cables made from?
"Don't forget that science always wins out in the end in any contest with pseudoscience, even if pseudoscience has more fools gold to play with. "
THAT is so VERY true Fred. And when SCIENCE fiinally proves what we already know.....youll be turning in your grave mate
Science is what we already know. It's what the flipping word means. If science only knew what you know (bugger all) we would be in a right sorry state.
Hi James, as you've probably noticed I am on the sceptics side so you may take that as 'not open minded' but knowledge is the answer not a closed mind.
Example: A plumber suggests you need 28mm pipe to the taps, you may say that is going to be expensive, answer yes but it will improve the flow. OK now that does have some truth in it BUT the flow from 15mm pipe is just fine for a sink.
In the same way a 2.5mm cable is simply expensive overkill, having looked at the site you suggest I cannot see any thing that could improve matters. Now a techie point here, 90% of low power devices use a switch mode power supply, one of the design problems with said supply is the EMI it might send back down the mains, to combat this they often have very serious filtering, far more than any cable could possibly have so again the question HOW CAN A CABLE IMPROVE THE SOUND, I will restate that and emphasise the word HOW. That site is like so many, offers a pseudo scientific answer to a non existent problem, RFI down the mains is simply not a problem. Please take my advice, a standard 'kettle' lead is as good as it gets, so if you are determined to spend then at least spend on an area that needs improving, room acoustics are always a good start. I am amazed that for all the talk about tweaking cables we hear so little about tweaking the room or speakers, the areas that really do matter. John...
Now I could get really angry with you, I have the hearing of someone of maybe half my age, I have a system that is so good that you would not belief it. If you believe that cables make any difference at all then you are the 'deaf/dumb/blind' one because they do not and if you think otherwise then you are a deluded silly old fool. Now look back over the postings and you may notice that I was the one who got told to f**k off, and if you carry on talking this drivel then I will tell you to f**k off. This whole talk about cables is DRIVEL, a 'non starter'. complete nonsense, marketing bullshit. Would you like me to be more specific then I will, anyone believing this complete nonsense is a mug to themselves, anyone spending more than £10 on any cable is being taken for a ride, the cable scam is one of the biggest scams in life and if you fall for it then you have been scammed big time, for f**k's sake wake up to reality.
John...
says it all really...oh and how come Fred follows him like a puppy dog, EVERWHERE theres 'cable talk'
Hmmm….I think this is getting all a bit too personal.
The reasons people are debating mains cables, is because this is a mains cable thread, with the title “mains leads, do they make any difference”
Please try to understand that your arguments that [a bit a bell wire is as good as a high current rated mains power cable that has been well designed, is screened, shielded and filtered] seams as ludicrous to me as my agreement that [noise, RFI, EMI etc. are present on the main and that this noise can interfere with the audio or video quality and that removing this noise can only help matters not worsen them] seams to you….why this seams ludicrous to you, I don’t know, it makes perfect sense to me, but your welcome to your opinion
I agree there are many areas, certainly in home audio, where you can improve on sound quality and I’m certainly not recommending anyone spend thousands of pounds on mains cables to power their £100 high street stereo, however I would say, if you have some good audio or video equipment, then a good quality mains cable (like the ones Elucidate make) can be a good upgrade….try it!
Hmmm….I think this is getting all a bit too personal.
The reasons people are debating mains cables, is because this is a mains cable thread, with the title “mains leads, do they make any difference”
Please try to understand that your arguments that [a bit a bell wire is as good as a high current rated mains power cable that has been well designed, is screened, shielded and filtered] seams as ludicrous to me as my agreement that [noise, RFI, EMI etc. are present on the main and that this noise can interfere with the audio or video quality and that removing this noise can only help matters not worsen them] seams to you….why this seams ludicrous to you, I don’t know, it makes perfect sense to me, but your welcome to your opinion
Facts can be scary to the superstitious but who said anything about bell wire??????
Adequately rated mains wires will perform just as well as any foo cable on the market, and that's a fact.
I can’t help but think if we all had your attitude (no offence) we’d all still be listening to a gramophone in the corner and thinking it was the best possible sound ever!
Worse still, if someone came alone and suggested a better needle, or more acoustically shaped horn might improve the sound, you would call them a fool?
It's difficult to keep things clean with the sulphurous whiff coming off JF and his ever refilling cans.
Every post about cables/leads turns in to the same mind numbing slagging off routine. That's why there are so few contributors (I am sporadic as it's so non productive).
Rik H like the angling, but throw fred back in when you've caught him as he's inedible!
Just what is the problem you guys have with reality, I'm not slagging anyone off, and I'm not having a go, all I want is to make it known that cables have so little a part to play we should concentrate on the parts that do matter, that's all. There are many other issues in reproduction lets discuss them rather than continually bleat on about something that is really of so little consequence. Now to my mind room acoustics are very important so lets talk about what has been done to improve yours, lets talk speaker placement a far more rewarding subject, lets talk amplifier topology, lets talk valve/tranny in fact lets talk anything of relavence, belive me cables are just so non relevant... John...
Since everyone seems happy to repeat themselves I don't mind doing it either.....
When I tested a braided Mains cable for my (former) Naim system Power Amp I decided to perform a little experiment..... (very much of a doubtful mindset at this point....)
I positioned the amplifier very close to the Mains outlet and fashioned an ultra short, high conductivity, "better-than-a-kettle-lead" Mains cable. Although the Naim did not have a captive cable, to keep things fair I shortened the lead to about 3" from the Naim connector and hooked up an IEC adaptor which could be applied to EITHER cable. My Test Cable was very high gauge, and about 9" long.
To keep a long story short, my test cable was first up. I listened carefully to the sound, took a mental snapshot of it, then cued the other cable and was blown away (to use a much maligned term). In comparisons, much to my intense disappointment, my lovingly crafted test cable sounded absolutely diabolical. With it in place, too much "hash" was evident, bass was non-existent and presentation was incredibly poor. Switching to the other cable was an emphatic victory for RFI suppression. Bass was so powerful and well delineated it raised eyebrows.
Like I said months ago....it was one of the easiest decisions I've ever made. Wasn't "placebo", because later I did a similar experiment with speaker cables (although not the braided ones) and came down in favour of my cheapo shortened Naim A4s.
I'm a hard person to convince...but I was convinced.
Perhaps I was feeling particularly suggestible that day....
Well I am amazed, now you didn't alter your medication that day did you. Maybe I am a complete Luddite, a deaf idiot, a piss head. Maybe I come from the land of perfect mains, or maybe I come from the land of no mains but I have never heard 'hash', in fact I have never heard 90% of what is talked about, but maybe that comes from powering the amp from a lead acid battery, but my player is mains powered as is the TV but I have never observed many of the problems that I read about. This seems to make me look like a complete deaf-o but I certainly do appreciate the mid range transparency of an electrostatic, the 'muddiness' of most 'monky coffin' speakers, the 'multipath' distortion of FM radio and I am very sensitive to the slightest crossover distortion in any amp whether that be £100 or £1000.
I do sometimes question my own sanity, not because I think I am insane but simply because so much of what I see does not seem to agree with the mainstream, for instance I have never heard a cable difference apart from our 'blind cable test' and then found that after Pluto had cleaned the connectors I then could hear no difference at all, maybe being 'out on a limb' does rather remove me from normal social interactions but if those interactions cause one to belive the 'heard' rather than the 'truth' then I would rather be where I am.
Now a question, what is the better route, to be socially accepted and follow the heard, or, understand the truth and be ostracised for it. I will not change for knowing but I would love to know all the same.
I can’t help but think if we all had your attitude (no offence) we’d all still be listening to a gramophone in the corner and thinking it was the best possible sound ever!
Worse still, if someone came alone and suggested a better needle, or more acoustically shaped horn might improve the sound, you would call them a fool?
James
The reason you think that mains leads improve the sound is because it's what you've been told by the twits that use their ears without input from their brains. Science and all the ABX tests to date demonstrate that they don't.
Find an electronic engineer that doesn't laugh at the very idea.
If science only knew what you know (bugger all) we would be in a right sorry state.
