Monstrous power cables

I didn’t buy from a dealer, but from another music lover either here, on the ‘gon, or US Audio Mart.

From what he told me, the dealer had three different cables available for audition and the previous owner went with what sounded best to him.

Thanks for all your thoughts and external reading links.  I do appreciate all of you.

I’ve not read them all but the idea that our components aren’t at the end of the electrical chain was interesting.  I’ve never looked at it in that way.

I’ve always had a dislike for unyielding cables, be they ICs or PCs.  Or even speaker cables, for that matter.  I think this probably comes from having limited space behind the equipment rack where stiff, large cables were a chore or couldn’t be used.

I’ve also had lightweight components being tilted up in the front from the pull of the audiophile-approved power cables pulling down on them and also the small monitors connected to behemoth cables and wondering when they’d get pulled off the stands by the cables.

I’m sure you’ve all experienced this, as well.

In one of the articles where the proprietor claims a single PC can take your system from “good to amazing” I call BS on.  I’m of the camp that cables can and do make a difference but that those differences are always subtle, at best.  So subtle, as a matter of fact (or opinion in my case), that if one used unfamiliar recordings to A/B the differences in PCs their choosing correctly would be akin to flipping a coin.  And with a “good to amazing” difference each of us should be able to pick correctly 100% of the time using music we’ve never heard before.

Thanks for the info, alexatpos.  The cables that came with my Maxim is just slightly larger in diameter than the Crown Jewel.  I think I’ll remove the tape at some point to see what the connectors look like and to see in the manufacturer’s name is on it.

waytoomuchstuff, my system sounds quite nice to me.  But I’ve not swapped the cable to the Maxim with another one.  I do know (now that I’ve thought about it) that I have the generic cable that came with my PurePower 2000 sitting around somewhere.  I upgraded(?) that PC with a shorter run of the Pangea PC.  

Did I notice a difference when I did that?  Nope.  But then I didn’t really do an A/B test since the PurePower has a few large batteries it cleans and stores the power into.  With no power coming into it it’ll still provide juice to the components for about ten minutes or so.

But I’ll be honest here:  99% of the time I interact with my stereo I’m not wearing my audiophile hat.  I just listen to and enjoy the music.  That also oftentimes happens when I change cables or or even components.  I seldom A/B test listening for the differences.  My motto is if the new item doesn’t immediately make me want to remove it, or I notice I’m not enjoying the music as much as before the swap, I normally just leave it in place.

I have lots of tubed gear, both for 2-channel stereo and headphone listening.  And whenever I buy a new (to me) piece of tubed gear I always buy extra, and in some cases, many extra sets of tubes for “tube rolling”.  When I’m buying all the extra tubes I’m normally wearing my audiophile hat.

My tube rolling goes like this:  I’ll listen to a few minutes of my test tracks a couple of times so that the sound is fresh in my memory.  I’ll swap out the tubes and will notice a difference.  Then after a few minutes my ears have adjusted to the difference and I’m right back to just listening to, and enjoying the music again.

It might just be that I take my audiophile hat off too quickly.  Or maybe my hearing just sucks.  Or I don’t focus hard enough.  Or most likely, I’m a Lazy Audiophile (if there is such a thing).

So many times I’ve danced with my speakers an inch here, a half-inch there, a quarter-inch over yonder and even an eighth-inch movements all over the place going from my chair to the speakers back to my chair over and over and over…

After many hours or days of this madness is when I’d get tired of it and throw in my Bose 901s!  Because with the Bose, they sound pretty good no matter where I put them and I listen to them differently than my other gear that I dance with.

Question:  How many of you have done a blind test to remove confirmation bias in reference to power cables?

The reason I ask is I was comparing DAC/streamers the other day.  In the past, I’d listen to one then swap out to listen to the other.  Doing it this way I heard a difference.  But it wasn’t a swapping back and forth type of a comparison.

I finally connected the two setups I wanted to compare (PS Audio Perfectwave with Bridge II vs Lumin U1 Mini into Benchmark DAC3) at the same time using the same brand of Ethernet cables and XLR cables to my preamp so that I could feed Roon to both streamers and swap back and forth using my preamp.

When I did this, I knew which input was what and, using three tracks from three different artists, I heard a difference.  The Lumin rig offered more distinction around the instruments which made the sound stage appear both deeper and wider.  The PSA rig by comparison softened the images and blended the soundstage more.

I preferred the Lumin rig, but not by as much as I thought I would.  I really thought the newer rig would provide more of an improvement in sound since the PSA unit is probably 10+ years old.  But I did prefer the Lumin setup by a slight margin.

Then I thought I’d get my teen son involved in my testing.  I showed him how to play the tracks and how to swap them back and forth.  BTW, I had previously used a decibel meter to get the output volumes as close as possible.

On the first test track, I clearly heard the same differences.  So I knew which was the PSA rig and which was the Lumin rig.  Except I was wrong.

Surprised by this we went to test track two.  Again, I heard the same differences.  And again I was wrong.  I preferred the PSA rig on the first two blind tested tracks.

The third recording the rig I chose was the Lumin setup.

My son, sitting off to the side while performing his duties, said that on the first two tests the PSA unit offered a cleaner and more distinct sound in the higher frequencies.  I’m guessing he heard more of a difference with his 16 year old ears vs my 57 year old ones.  I didn’t ask him what he heard on the third test track.

So I’m a bit dumfounded by my experiment.  I came away from that brief test with the idea that the better sounding rig was recording dependent.  This now knocks my desire to upgrade my streaming device into a loop.  

The power cables used were different, however, and I might try this again using PC from the same manufacture.  

Thanks for all your suggestions.  I do appreciate them all.

Normally (like 95% of the time), when I compare a new component I’ll put it into my system for an extended period of time.  The only times it’ll come out quickly is if it bothers me and makes listening to music not enjoyable.  Those instances are pretty rare, however.  
 

With the recent comparisons, I wanted to be able to do a quick side by side test.  The reason:  I’d recently picked up three different streamers and DACs to test out and, as I don’t want to keep them all, wanted to figure out which one to let go.

First, I listened to the Stack streamer with the Denafrips Aries II combo for many weeks.  I thought the rig sounded great.

I then swapped to the Lumin U1 Mini with Benchmark DAC3.  I was, and still am, having trouble getting the Lumin to play nicely with Roon.  It keeps either stopping or getting jammed to the point I have to restart it.  Kind of a PITA.  It plays fine with the Lumin app but I haven’t figured out how to inport my ripped library which is also a pain.

The sound, though, has been quite impressive.  I enjoy this combo better than the previous one, though not by much.  This rig seems to extract a bit more info from the recordings.  And I had been listening to this rig for a couple of weeks, as well.

The reason I put the PSA back into my setup to directly compare the two was because I had finished taking fotos of the PSA unit, got the box from the crawl space, and was going to list it for sale.  But just for fun, and before bidding adieu, I thought I do the direct comparison.

And now I’m not so sure which I prefer.  Since I’m in no hurry I’ll probably listen to the two for a while.

OMG!
 

So I finally decided to take the tape off of the monstrous cable to see if I could find the maker.  In so doing, I discovered that this cable, which is about the thickness of the center of a toilet paper roll, is wrapped in the following:

Outer nylon mesh for looks; black velvet material around the cable; plumber’s tape (yep, you read me correctly) in about a third of an inch thickness; then under that a fine steel mesh wrapped around the cable; then I think the next level going in toward the cable themselves is another layer of plumber’s tape.  I haven’t gotten there yet in the unraveling of this thing.

Needless to say, i was absolutely shocked that the majority of the girth is made up by an enormous amount of plumber’s tape.  One of the plugs is made by Hubbell and I didn’t see a name on the other end.

To think the original owner paid over $1K for this thing is…well, crazy had he been able to look underneath the pretty wrapping.  

I don’t think I’m inserting this back into my system mainly because I got tired of the thickness.  And the location of the plug made it almost impossible to move some speakers around closer to the wall behind the speakers because the thing literally stuck out damn near a foot from the wall!

I wish I could post photos here.  You would not believe it.  It looks hand-made.

Crazy!

I attempted to put some photos in virtual system.

BTW, it is Teflon tape.  The bulk is what I don’t like.  It’s out of the lineup and has been replaced by a generic cable costing much, much less.

The model is 1000 from Sunny Cable Technologies and retails for $2700.

I was going to tear it down to see what was underneath but I think I’ll stop and retake the damn thing.  Crazy price!