On the subject of tweaks!

[Folsom]

my emphasis

I'm of a similar mind certainly from a theoretical standpoint, and have little interest in using power cords to 'tune' the sound of my system.

Within my limited grasp of electricity I'm told that the electricity in my house can have "noise on the line." I'm told this can come in from the street (possible though not so much), can come from appliances in my house (more likely) and from the components of my audio system (more likely still.) I'm told this line noise can result in distortion of the audio signal and/or poorer sound. Some audiophile power cord manufacturers claim to reduce or eliminate this noise, and, of those that do, I certainly hear differences in sound with and without such cords in use.

In the context of this discussion, I gather that "neutral wires" are those that don't intentionally alter what comes off the wall or attempt to change the state of the electricity within the audio system, eg. noise induced by components onto the line, switching power supplies, etc.

So... assuming line noise is a reality, is line noise distortion? Or is the removal of line noise distortion or lead to sound distortion?

David, I'm guessing your view is practical and says: remove the audiophile power cords to achieve a neutral baseline.

Where I struggle is with the question: "what is neutral?" Is neutral the native electricity coming off the wall and what's within the audio system? Or is neutral the absence of possibly electrically altering audiophile power cords? (What I might call "tweak minimalism".)

My second question, if I may is: where do you stand wrt manufacturer supplied power cords vs. say, the Ching Cheng? If it depends on the manufacturer's cord, let's use Lamm supplied power cords as the example. It sounds like Stever replaced his Lamm front-end component cords with Ching-Cheng. Are the native cords not neutral?

The short answer is you don't really know enough to ask the right questions here.

First truth is we don't really even know why they sound different. Many will describe frequency changes, emphasis, etc, but there's no way to control that deliberately - and even more so there's no measurements that show the differences despite them being very audible (zero changes in any frequency levels have ever been measured). You make cables in different ways and see what you get...

But because they all sound so different people do tune stereos with them.

What isn't really a factor is the noise from the line. The design of the power cord can do almost nothing to change that. And even what can be done, the CC's do almost nothing - they have the most ordinary configuration possible. So there is no connection to "reduced noise" from CC cables. There are more complicated subjects associated with power cords but nothing really worth getting into too much. CC's have simple parts that are solid at the ends (requirement for hospital grade).

When David says neutral he means the sound, and only the sound. They don't cause any problems, and are even across the board. There is no feeling of "emphasis". They don't make any parts of the music distracting, or let you down on others.

 

[Tango]

When David says neutral he means the sound, and only the sound. They don't cause any problems, and are even across the board. There is no feeling of "emphasis". They don't make any parts of the music distracting, or let you down on others.

You said it well in plain words.

 

[RogerD]

I’d rather be concerned more about clarity,the amount of non congestion and non compression of the sound field than neutrality. In my experience the cable is a non issue at some point in the evolution of a system.

 

[bonzo75]

To Tima's what is neutrality. For me neutrality is it does not add its own color to upstream or downstream components or recordings, so if you change you can hear the difference without a constant attribute.

While neutrality should not consistently add anything, it should not consistently take away something, which is harder to find out.

Also, some people mistake neutral for tonally grey, or lack of tonal colors. Tonal color is different from color. The latter is constant across recordings, the former varies with recordings but you hear different colors to different instruments within the same performance

 

[Folsom]

What i meant was no one will buy other hi-end cables if $5 cord can outperform them.

Well, we'll see if that always holds true but... not everyone prefers them. The argument from people that do would be that the person who doesn't need to change their associated equipment.... SO you can see how maybe the "$5 cord" may not be the exact answer to every riddle. People like all sorts of things. And as established in my previous post, the CC's aren't performing any kind of non-existent magic associated with noise or whatever.

 

[NorthStar]

Hubbell HBL8215Cs ... connectors (2 meters - 6.5 feet)
• https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QZ1XWKX/ref=psdc_3236443011_t3_B01L2UNMXI

Same price (1.85 meter - 6 feet)
• https://www.amazon.com/ExpressUSA-CHING-E88446-EL-701-EL-302/dp/B07FRXTBJN

And ... (1.5 meter - 5 feet)
• https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YS2BL9...9Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

 

[tima]

To Tima's what is neutrality. For me neutrality is it does not add its own color to upstream or downstream components or recordings, so if you change you can hear the difference without a constant attribute.

While neutrality should not consistently add anything, it should not consistently take away something, which is harder to find out.

Also, some people mistake neutral for tonally grey, or lack of tonal colors. Tonal color is different from color. The latter is constant across recordings, the former varies with recordings but you hear different colors to different instruments within the same performance

At least you read my post (unlike Folsom.)

I get the idea of neutrality as you describe which seems standard usage in this context.
I understand we hear differences between different wires relative to one another.
I don't believe neutral is lacking in tone color or some other attribute of music that we hear, say, in the concert hall or see in a score.

Would you recognize neutral if you only have a single brand? Even if you could try it in multiple systems?

 

[bonzo75]

No I wouldn't recognize neutral. Well I would know it isn't imparting some constant color to an extent, but I wouldn't know if it was consistently not taking out something. I could also not realize I what I didn't know then till I heard something else

 

[spiritofmusic]

Well, I guess if you buy a $100k-400k tt, you'll be desperate for a 99 cents pwr cbl to sound good.

 

[ddk]

Well, I guess if you buy a $100k-400k tt, you'll be desperate for a 99 cents pwr cbl to sound good.

I know of only one guy who needs an audiophile grade power cord on his tt to sound good !

david

 

[tima]

No I wouldn't recognize neutral. Well I would know it isn't imparting some constant color to an extent, but I wouldn't know if it was consistently not taking out something. I could also not realize I what I didn't know then till I heard something else

Yes. My answer is the same.

I'm still working out a notion of neutral and its puzzled me for a while. At this point my inclination is to say there is no neutral, at least in any absolute sense. Everything has a context. X is more neutral than Y or Z.

It's why I asked David in the way I did. I invite his input or correction, but I'm guessing it's easier to say we can get to neutral - or at least a notion of it - by removing tweaks and going back to basics. (Leave aside for now the question of what is a tweak.) It's not so much a specifiable sound, but bypassing all the ways we find to alter what we hear.

There was a time when not much attention was paid to cables and power cords or even grooming components with platforms or boards. Now (almost) no one denies that tweaks make a difference when they are in place vs not installed. Have we gone overboard? How much of what we do to our systems comes from the desire for something different, the desire to fiddle with it because we can?

 

[spiritofmusic]

I know of only one guy who needs an audiophile grade power cord on his tt to sound good !

david

Touché.

 

[microstrip]

(...) In the context of this discussion, I gather that "neutral wires" are those that don't intentionally alter what comes off the wall or attempt to change the state of the electricity within the audio system, eg. noise induced by components onto the line, switching power supplies, etc. (...)

This is the question - what means neutral? IMHO there is not such thing in stereo sound reproduction - the best we can do is consider that some excessive deviations from our own reference sound is being not neutral. Or like Floyd Toole did, we can make a statistical analysis of people preference and consider that the speakers that the majority preferred in very specific conditions were the neutral ones in a measuring scheme.

Surely it is not something I want to my system - I want it to reproduce sound in a way I enjoy and it pleases my preferences, not someone else ones - fortunately for manufacturers and me, I share the preferences of many others! IMHO neutral can be applied as a generic qualifier for large differences, but not for the so called small differences created by what we call tweaks, that can't be correlated with classical audio measurements.

The high-end sound is essentially not neutral, but relies on very controlled deviations of neutrality to enhance our listening experience. In some sense we can consider that the weakest link in a system is a component whose deviations mask or conflict with the deviations aimed by other equipment in the chain.

However neutral is a strong advertisement word - although designers usually do not refer to it specifically in interviews, the marketing literature is filed with it. Therein all the existing bizarre effects are used to create "the" neutral component - an unique piece that inserted in our system will pass the music untouched directly in our brains.

And, no Ching Cheng power cables are not neutral. But IMHO they act mainly by omission, not by addition, and in this sense they are more predictable than many others. BTW, without knowing it specifically, some of us have read and owned about such type of power cables long before they were presented in WBF - Lew Johnson used them in his electronics and addressed the subject in an interview long ago. He simply called them "selected hospital grade power cables" .

As always, but particularly about tweaks, IMHO, YMMV.

 

[ddk]

my emphasis

I'm of a similar mind certainly from a theoretical standpoint, and have little interest in using power cords to 'tune' the sound of my system.

Within my limited grasp of electricity I'm told that the electricity in my house can have "noise on the line." I'm told this can come in from the street (possible though not so much), can come from appliances in my house (more likely) and from the components of my audio system (more likely still.) I'm told this line noise can result in distortion of the audio signal and/or poorer sound. Some audiophile power cord manufacturers claim to reduce or eliminate this noise, and, of those that do, I certainly hear differences in sound with and without such cords in use.

In the context of this discussion, I gather that "neutral wires" are those that don't intentionally alter what comes off the wall or attempt to change the state of the electricity within the audio system, eg. noise induced by components onto the line, switching power supplies, etc.

So... assuming line noise is a reality, is line noise distortion? Or is the removal of line noise distortion or lead to sound distortion?

David, I'm guessing your view is practical and says: remove the audiophile power cords to achieve a neutral baseline.

Where I struggle is with the question: "what is neutral?" Is neutral the native electricity coming off the wall and what's within the audio system? Or is neutral the absence of possibly electrically altering audiophile power cords? (What I might call "tweak minimalism".)

My second question, if I may is: where do you stand wrt manufacturer supplied power cords vs. say, the Ching Cheng? If it depends on the manufacturer's cord, let's use Lamm supplied power cords as the example. It sounds like Stever replaced his Lamm front-end component cords with Ching-Cheng. Are the native cords not neutral?

Neutral is an absolute ideal but an impossibility in the real world. Neutral in this context means while the support component might have its own character it’s sonic footprint is small enough to go unnoticed and unlike many audiophile brands impose itself on the playback chain and on the recorded music by extension. By extension a neutral system is one that’s unimpressive and doesn’t compete with the music. Simple test is that every recording and every venue is unique or there’s enough information for the listener to know that there’s a difference. In the real world there’s no such thing as as black backgrounds every location we pass through in life has its own vibe and ambience and they’re there in many halfway decent non-audiophile recording. IMO this vibe is very important for any illusions of reality because it’s a subconscious connection to reality; ie “natural”. Unfortunately the first thing that happens with many audiophile reissues is that they see that ambient presence as noise and filtering it out and with it the life of that recording. The only way is to attack certain frequencies and since the filtering out is indiscriminate music is also filtered out which leads to thinness due to information loss. Many power cords and cables do the same thing by masking certain frequencies therefore boosting others either intentionally or throu incompetence. Of course the opposite is also that ambient vibe is boosted to impress but also affects the same frequencies as music boosting those which leads to loss of information and homogenized sound. The other simple clue to a less neutral sound is when the system is competing for attention, either in a negative or a positive and instead of connecting with music the listener is constantly impressed by the same hifi attribute with every recording or is always annoyed by something. IME CC power cords don’t manipulate impose, impress, or annoy so they’re neutral by my definition and by extension natural.

I’m not an ee but I’ve researched the subject of line noise extensively, there’s so much of it caused by so many many thing and no way of removing it that I’m aware of. Best one can do separate from what the manufacturer has done inside their boxes is to put layers between some of the noise and electronics, hence dedicated circuits, dedicated panel, isolated ground etc. CC isn’t a line noise filter just a solid 14” hospital grade cord.

I know Lamm used to include a 16” version of this CC with their amplifiers and a higher gauge model with their front ends. Both wires are decent and relatively neutral. Given the size of the company I’m sure many other manufacturers stock cords are CC brand. I know that while specs are similar stock cords also sound different from one another and you need to verify each one. I stopped looking when I found this version of CC back in 2002.

david

 

[ddk]

Touché.

 

[microstrip]

Touché.

It is an effect explained since long. The power cable acts as a selective filter/absorber of the noise created by the power supply of the turntable. Probably this particular noise enhances your system, keep it and enjoy your LPs!

 

[spiritofmusic]

My GF looks at $100k+ tts (hell, 99% of audiophile tts) AND $1k+ power cords (hell, 99% of audiophile power cords) as equally out there.

Indeed, she feels she's letting herself down, she's working twds 100%.

 

[tima]

Neutral is an absolute ideal but an impossibility in the real world. Neutral in this context means while the support component might have its own character it’s sonic footprint is small enough to go unnoticed and unlike many audiophile brands impose itself on the playback chain and on the recorded music by extension. By extension a neutral system is one that’s unimpressive and doesn’t compete with the music. Simple test is that every recording and every venue is unique or there’s enough information for the listener to know that there’s a difference. In the real world there’s no such thing as as black backgrounds every location we pass through in life has its own vibe and ambience and they’re there in many halfway decent non-audiophile recording. IMO this vibe is very important for any illusions of reality because it’s a subconscious connection to reality; ie “natural”.

All of that - excellent - so much I agree with. Thank you.

 

[dminches]

How does one buy a Ching Cheng PC?

 

[the sound of Tao]

Is neutral about absolute transparency or is this neutral still possibly about distortion or degradation but just an even handed degradation. Is neutrality essentially more based in not impacting on tonality or is it about not creating an imbalance or shift in the essential character of the signal even if may still have some levels of induced distortion but that these maybmask or veil essentially evenly.