Personally, I'll believe it.... when I hear it myself, in a double blind test, run by someone I trust (not to cheat on the running of the test itself).
The obvious question is: If their product was really better, and knowing that non-blind tests are notoriously unreliable, then why
DIDN'T they use a legitimate double blind test to prove it?
Certain cable vendors (whom I won't name) are well known for actually "fudging the results" of demonstrations and tests, as well as for using "psychological trickery" to produce the responses they want in an audience.
(Statistically, the majority of people prefer the wine in the bottle with the higher price tag - even if you put the same wine in both bottles - which is why you can't trust "sighted tests".)
(It's like the old joke goes..... If you don't want people to wonder if you have a few aces stuffed up your sleeves, then why aren't you wearing short sleeves? )
I find the claim that they found the result to be "louder" with a "better" power cable to be especially interesting.
There are only two ways in which you can change sound so that it sounds louder... as relates to a cable.
1) You can actually make it louder - which means to increase the signal level. This would be very easy to measure and so to confirm or deny.
2) You can add some sort of distortion which makes it seem "perceptually louder". (This would be a bad thing. It would also be something I wouldn't expect from anything except a very poor quality power cable.)
3)
Of course, the third non-possibility is to simply convince people that they THINK it sounds louder.
It's not unreasonable to hear tiny differences in interconnects. Each type of cable has a characteristic amount of inductance, resistance, and capacitance, and will react a tiny bit differently with the circuitry in your source component. Likewise, if you were to go to five different Brand X paint stores, and order the same custom color from each, you would also find that they were slightly different - because their mixing machines are almost certainly not calibrated identically (you probably wouldn't notice it unless you put the samples next to each other - and the difference may be less than the amount the paint will fade in a week - but the difference will probably exist). Of course, we're only talking about tiny differences, and no one or the other is actually
better. It is also not especially difficult to specifically design or modify an audio component so that it is
excessively sensitive to differences in cables. (For example, many vintage - and some new - tube preamps are very sensitive to capacitance on their output interconnects. It doesn't suggest that the component in question is "especially revealing" - merely that it is badly designed.)
(To put that last sentence even more bluntly. If you buy a $5000 power amplifier, and find out that it sounds better with a $500 power cable than with a reasonable commercial quality $20 power cable, you
SHOULDN'T be asking what's so good about the expensive power cable. You
SHOULD be asking why your $5000 amplifier has such a poorly designed power supply that it is actually sensitive to power cables. Likewise, if you hear a huge difference when you try a different interconnect between your preamp and power amp, then there are some serious design
FLAWS in your preamp, or your power amp, or possibly both.)
So, here are my questions:
1) If they're claiming that some expensive power cable actually made the signal louder, did they provide measurements to demonstrate this. (Again, if it's true, it should be easy enough to measure and prove.)
2) What were they comparing it to? Were they comparing it to a "normal commercial cable" of adequate thickness and reasonable construction?
(It's certainly possible to reduce the performance of an amplifier by deliberately using a cable that is too thin to carry the required current, or that is put together so badly that is has excessively high resistance.)
3) If "upgrading" to a more expensive power cable actually could give you the same "improvement" as turning your preamp up by a fraction of a dB, why would you consider spending the money?
(Wouldn't it be easier just to turn the preamp up a fraction of a dB?)
Funny that this should pop up. I just had a training with a high dollar cable manufacturer. I was a little surprised to hear the differences between the cables. They weren't night and day, but there were subtle differences.
The comparison was not blind, but as a skeptic I was VERY hard on the differences heard.
I missed the power cable testing, but all of my peers attested that it sounded "louder" not better or more clear, but it was louder.
It seems to get brushed off as "stupid" to purchase better cabling. I don't believe it is, but I do believe you reach a point of diminishing returns.
In the next month i will be replacing all of my interconnects and power cables with high dollar pieces. I will report back on what differences if any are noticed.
)
