Power Conditioning done by IC's & Speaker Cables

Any filtering that you are getting in a power cord or conditioner will have an effect on the dynamics or the noise (common-mode). Filtering in IC's or speaker cables directly filter (roll-off) the signal high-frequencies. This is not the same type of filtering.

Chances are, that you have a ground-loop that is adding common-mode noise to your system and the conditioners are helping to reduce this. Also, but less likely, you may have excessive HF noise on the power line that is getting past some power supplies in some components. It is worth trying to deterimine if it is the ground-loop by floating the grounds on all components except one and not using the conditioners. If the noise floor drops and the sound is pristine, then the ground-loop is at fault.

As for noise induced by cables, this is certainly possible as well. If you have IC's with jumbled crystal lattice in the conductors, then you will get soem sibilance from this. The speaker cables can have filtering to eliminate this. However, it is better just to eliminate the sibiliance by getting the right IC's. Likewise with the speaker cables. I recommend that my customers not use any power conditioning unless it is a regenerative device or a simple isolation transformer.

Sean wrote:

As such, i would rather have a power cord do as much filtering as possible than to have to go through current limiting devices that eat up more rack or floor space.

If I understand you right, I think we may differ on this one. I relegate power cord filtering to only the ground conductor (for common-mode noise). For the current-carrying conductors I prefer no filtering, in fact I want the inductance and resistance to be as low as possible. This is the way my cord, the Magnum2 works, and it has held its own against much more expensive cords, particularly when used with power amps (see BFS review issue #140). I do not believe in shielding power cords either. There are better ways to control stray fields.

I believe the reason that some of the shielded and highly inductive/capacitive cords can have a positive effect, particularly on line-level components, is that they are reducing common-mode noise from ground-loops, abeit at the cost of signal dynamics.

TWL - I believe that the reason that you like the Bybee filters is because they eliminate some of the sibilants caused by wire in your IC's and speaker cables that has jumbled crystal lattice. If you replaced this with wire that has organized crystal structure, you could probably eliminate the filters.

This is the reason why so many folks believe that stranded wire is worse than solid wire. It's because cold-working the wire to braid or twist it into stranded bundles damages the crystal structure and sibilants are the result.

This is also why direct-immersion cryo damages the sound of the wire - the crystal structure is then helter-skelter, not well-organized. This causes reflections and current-bunching in the conductor.

Stehno -
I do believe that more organized, relaxed crystal structure can reduce sibilance. I actually just started offering a cable I call the "Perfect Crystal" (marketing talk), which eliminates most of the smll sibilance that my "standard" cables had. However, I'm sure that you can damage even single-crystal wire by working it or temp-shocking it. Single-crystal wire must be handled carefully after it is fabricated or you will wreck it. For instance, if you were to twist several small gauges of single-crystal into a stranded wire, working the metal like this would cause it to be no longer single-crystal. It would definitely break it up into smaller crystals, with the resulting sibilance.

It's hard to believe that crystal structure in a power cord would make much difference, particularly given that there is usually far more ROMEX in the wall that has relatively crappy crystal structure, but you evidently have the empirical evidence on this. I wonder how much of the sibilance reduction was actually due to the improved grounding or ground-filtering provided by the conditioner as opposed to the current-carrying wires? If the sibilance is due to ground-loop noise, then this could explain it. The power Hot and neutral wires do not really explain it, IMO. Another experiment, where you unground the amps at the wall outlets or at the conditioner using cheater plugs would tell you if it is a ground-loop causing the sibilance.