On 2009-06-21, David Pitt wrote:
Jim Lesurf wrote:

I got my latest copy of 'Stereophile' yesterday and started to read it. I
came across comments by Paul Messenger about some work that Russ Andrews
and Ben Duncan have recently put onto the web. This seems to be taken by
Paul Messenger as showing that Russ's claims re some of his products are
"now supported by proper scientific analysis".

But having looked at

http://www.russandrews.com/downloads...estPremRes.pdf

There appear to be two components to this, do the Russ Andrews mains lead
attenuate mains bourn noise and does mains bourn noise have any effect on
Hi-Fi systems.

It may have been demonstrated that the fancy cables can show some RF
attenuation but it is not demonstrated that this has any effect on sound
quality, that remains just a belief, "RFI is a major pollutant and we
believe that it is one of the major reasons why Hi-Fi systems do not perform
at their best".

Exactly.

I think the paper probably does show that under some circumstances the
Russ Andrews power cords do attenuate interference, and that under some
circumstances RFI can probably be induced to increase the distortion from
a particular amplifier. To me these are not very novel matters.

We are left with the questions of: (i) exactly what are those
circumstances in detail; (ii) whether they are relevant to real life;
and (iii) whether any effects are audible in practice. These seem more
important to me but the paper fails to address them.

However setting my academic curiosity aside I wouldn't think twice before
taking the amount such power cords cost and spending it instead on buying
some music.

I think I have my priorities right.

--
John Phillips