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I read a skeptical electrical engineers comment that went something to the effect that he found it hilarious that there may be hundreds of kilometers of power lines between the source and the outlet to your audio gear yet some people seemed to think by spending outrageous money on exotic materials and recipes for that the last meter between outlet and amp there could ever be a realistic difference. (Please excuse the run on sentence...)Seems to be a rather valid point. I can understand having products that clean up dirty AC. I run a Virtue M-901 off battery power and the background noise level is pretty much non-existent. But a lot of the cables out there are not intended to act as filters. Or do they anyways?RegardsDave
But a lot of the cables out there are not intended to act as filters. Or do they anyways?
I tend to run on myself, so no worries.First, let's look at his premise: it is backwards. It is not the last meter (or so). It is the first. We have to look at this from the equipment side. It is like the water purification straws that are available for hikers and survival kits. You can drink from some nasty sources and get potable water. The straw is a filter to rid the supply of potentially life threatening organisms and toxins. Fortunately a cable designers' task is much easier. All we have to do is juggle some easily identifiable and quantifiable parameters to improve SQ.The hard part is getting past the "common knowledge" that LCR is all there is to cables. An audio cable is a system that involves additional design parameters: what is the material and it's' purity? What is the wire consist? Is it stranded or solid core. What are the gauges of the strands, if multi strand? What is the dielectric and the density of that dielectric? What is the dielectric absorption of the insulation? What is the velocity of propagation of that wire? Is it plated and if so, with what material at what thickness? What is the method of termination? What type of termination is used?Then we have to consider transmission line dynamics to determine optimum lengths of cables considering the frequency or range of frequencies. Then we take into consideration the lay of the cable. Is it a parallel run, twisted pair, helical wind or Litz configuration? Will a combination of lays work better?Designing an audio cable of any sort is a design exercise that involves small gains or losses or no change at every level. All of this results in a filter that is optimized for the application. Quite frankly speaking interconnects are easy. I can design an analog interconnect to produce any result I want. Want more bass? No problem. A bump in the mids or highs? Same story. The hardest cables are power cables with high performance digital cables close behind.All of this takes hours and hours with untold design goats produced to get there. That is where the expense comes from along with sourcing the finest materials.Most EEs produce widgets for the masses and have been taught how to do so. Like my theoretical physicist audio guru told me years ago: "We know how this stuff works, basically. What we don't fully understand is HOW it works."Make any sense?Dave
After Dave's note on "untold design goats", I had to do some googling:Sorry for the off-track post, but the thought/image had me chuckling
Have the battery powered true sinewave 2KVA AC regenerator. Even true sinewave, is still about the same distortion level as the wall AC, but without the hash. Battery powered electronics and a faraday cage!
Batteries aren't as good as most people think... by themselves they won't be as good as a decent linear ps.