After Market Power Cables - Gold or Snake Oil?


Myself and a collegue of mine have been discussing the potential benefit(s) of using after market power cables with hifi equipment. I claim that since the majority of home owners gain their power from the everyday wall socket, how does the addition of a short length of 'expensive' cabling make any appreciable difference to the sound quality. Are we kidding ourselves and buying into marketing hype or is there some scientific truth to the matter? I am a musician/recordist who understands the fundamentals of electricity and sound reproduction.
checkmate110

Showing 1 response by hepl

My advise, try it before buying it. Most systems will get a
modest improvement with a good quality power cable like
PS Audio Mini Lab, 10 awg shielded cable for around $150.00 . Unless you have very exotic or power hungry amps
you won't need an expensive power cord(>1K). Like others have said before you must start with dedicated lines, isolated ground preferred, and quality outlets. In the past
I have tried different power cords, on some brands of amps
(Krell) they did made a noticeable difference, on others like Linn the difference was very subtle, Linn do have great transformers, shielded in the case of the Klout amp.
I took one of my Klouts to an audio store to try one really
expensive power cord, the salesman gave a lecture on the big difference this cord will make with it's 8 awg wires, at
that point I removed the cover of the amp to show him that the amp was internally wired with 18 awg cable from the power connector to the transformer. I asked him why would I need a 8 awg power cord when the amp only draw 6.3 amps, he
had no anwser for my question. Anyhow the expensive cord didn't improve over the $150.00 one. So please be advised that I am not telling that you will not get an improvement,
all I am saying is that because someone says that he or she got a huge improvement in their gear it may not do the same on yours. Like I said, try them first, if you hear an improvement buy them. Select the brand you like and start with the cheapest model, you will find that you will reach
a point where the next model will not sound better than the
previous, the previous will be a good match to your system.