Effect of coiling power cords?


For convenience much of my gear is plugged into power strips that are, in turn, plugged into a power conditioner or wall socket.  In many cases the power cords are substantially longer than need be, so I've coiled them up into small spools, say 4-5" diameter, and fixed them with zip ties.  I'm doing this in 3 systms - one simple and small, another complex and extremely resolving and an A/V setup.  I'm not a big believer in fancy power cords, but it occurred to me that this is creating several inductors that could conceivably interact with each other, introducing noise, crosstalk, hum, or whatever.  What I'm doing doesn't sound very exotic, yet I can never remember hearing anything about about such effects.  Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention.  FWIW, I don't have any hum or noise anyplace unless I turn the volume to max on phono inputs.  And even that is teeny.

Anyway, does anybody know anything about what impact coiling the power cords might have?  Whatever the case, it seems like the best practice would be the shortest, straightest run from plug to equipment.  But again, I've never heard anything about real world impact on SQ. Cheers,
raueda1

Showing 1 response by millercarbon

If you don't hear any difference then don't worry about it.

The rest is right too but its this last bit that matters. Most of the advice against coiling is based on large cords coiled many times which can get hot maybe even fire hazard hot. But you just can't coil a fat 5 ft power cord enough for that.
What you can do though is create a field powerful enough to smear the signal- and not just in the interconnects but in the power cords themselves as well. This is not anything you will ever hear as noise, per se. Its doubtful you will hear anything at all. The only way to know if its there is to carefully and correctly route all cables maintaining as much spacing around them as you can. They should also be up off the floor and away from walls and anything else- especially other cables. When they must come close crossing at right angles is better than parallel. Of course we can't always do this but to the extent its possible that's the idea.

Then after all this tweaking you give everything an hour or so to settle down, after all that bending it'll need it. Then listen and it will be like a thin veil has been removed. That veil was the noise you couldn't hear.

If you don't hear it don't worry, you can always put it back. Lol!