Cables /power conditioner- Order of importance


Spoke to a few dealers regarding cables/conditioners and most of their opinions seems to differ. If youI wish to upgrade cable/conditioner but has limited budget, which would you upgrade 1st. Power conditioner, speaker cable, power cord, interconnect? What would be your order of importance? TQ. Happy listening
audioblazer

Showing 2 responses by stehno

By far power conditioning would rank first and foremost on my list. Simply because 'proper' line conditioning is so fundamental and foundational to the overall performance and listenability of a given system. It's still one of the final frontier's for many.

In fact, once you've experienced long-term listening with excellent line conditioners, you will discover that most every other system is quite fatiguing with grain, hash, negative induced siblilance, etc..

Note that I use the term 'proper' because, like any other component, there are plenty of line-conditioners that simply aren't worth much and in the case of even some very popular line conditioners the sonics are actually better when you remove the line conditioner(s) from the system.

Since my line conditioners have a built-in power cable, I consider them one and the same.

Beyond that whether the ics or scs come next might best be answered by first determining which of the current ics and scs is hindering performance the most. That would determine for me which will provide better benefit.

-IMO
Anacrusis' suggestions to clean the contact points, install audio grade outlets, etc. are good advice.

However, none of those items will clean the noisy AC coming into your house from the pole. Nor will any simply power cable.

And since everybody has noisy AC to one bad degree or another, it is in everybody's best interest to install 'proper' line conditioning asap.

Only then are your components truly able to begin to demonstrate their full potential.

-IMO