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Author Topic: Power cord sonic improvement potential?  (Read 3893 times)

Offline elunkenheimer

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Power cord sonic improvement potential?
« on: March 19, 2010, 07:19:01 AM »
We audiophiles went through the discovery that speaker cables make a serious sonic difference back in the 80's. Then even more astounding in the 90's was the discovery that power cables make a huge sonic difference. I remember the shock I had back in the early 90's when I replaced the stock, fat Belden power cord on my big, $3000 Krell amp with what seemed insanely priced $500 esoteric powercord (now that would be cheap today price-wise) and could not believe the improvement in sound. My reaction was that the folks from Krell hadn't ever heard themselves the true capability of their design, (I'm a Cornell EE). I was looking at the skinny little zip-cord that runs into the back of my massive Tascam 42B last night and couldn't help but think that replacing it would be a major sonic improvement. Have any of you experimented at all in this area?

 


Offline stellavox

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Re: Power cord sonic improvement potential?
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2010, 08:12:38 AM »
It sure can.  HOWEVER - look inside the recorder and see what size wire runs from the power conector thru the switch and fuse to the power transformer.  I'd opine that if it's not the same AWG as the power cord you're using, you'll loose whatever you might gain.

Charles

Offline Ki Choi

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Re: Power cord sonic improvement potential?
« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2010, 11:29:32 AM »
Interesting topic...
I've been a skept at best for all fancy cables - interconnect, speaker, and power, etc.  I firmly believed the basic physics and engineering parameters such as inductance, impedence, and capacitance should only govern the performance of any cables.

In my recent first hand experience, I have realized that human ears are remarkable instruments that can respond to sonic characteristics way beyond the parameters I can measure with the modern test equipments.  Having different speakers cables for a pair of 4 ohm Maggies made a difference in sound not only to me but others in the room and the long interconnects I was using at the time did change the sound characteristics when replaced with more fancier cables from a well known company.

On the other hand, the power cables are still unproven mistery to me.  I would tend to lean towards adding active power filters over changing wire gauges and geometry.  But then again, what the h__ do I know about the wires anyway...

Ki
Ki Choi

Offline jeri

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Re: Power cord sonic improvement potential?
« Reply #3 on: March 19, 2010, 12:25:19 PM »
Is replacing the last 6 feet or so of power cable with audiophile cable good enough?  Or do you have to keep going and replace hundreds of feet of non-audiophile NMC cable in the wall, too?  After all, it's not like the power source starts where you plug the thing in.  I've never understood the claims for audiophile power cords.
Jeri

Offline ironbut

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Re: Power cord sonic improvement potential?
« Reply #4 on: March 19, 2010, 01:03:29 PM »
Welcome to the forum elunkenheimer,

I was pretty skeptical about power cables myself. What I found was that it depends entirely upon the gear it's being used with (power supply?). I bought a pretty $$$ cable (VH Audio Air Sine) and tried it with all my audio gear. For the most part, the better designed the gear, the less impact the power cord had. Where I did hear a significant difference was with a lower priced CD player I had at the time.
Switching power supply? That's my guess. It did improve the sound enough that I kept the player until it died.

Regarding power, I've always been a big believer in dedicated circuits in the house wiring though. Especially in these digital days, putting your entire system on one or two dedicated circuits not only inhibits nasty stuff like ground loops and digital hash but it's better for your equipment. I also like to have a 20A outlet for my amps which seems to help with those big moments in the program material (my pet peeve!).
I'd venture to guess that having a new 15A circuit run from the main panel to a new outlet will cost about the same as many "mid priced" power cords.

BTW I spent some time on the Cornell campus in the fall many years ago. Beautiful!

steve koto
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