Dear All: I am doing an engineering study of my own right now on this very hot issue, Powercords. Like all self projects it started with almost $0 funding. What I've done so far would interest DIY folks very much. There are 3 important features(IMHO)of PC which I first investigated a) Conductor size.. b)Stranding..c)Insulation material. Shielding & twisting maybe later. I prepared several 1.5m lengths of copper fine stranded,PVC insulated, shielded powercables of various sizes..(18, 16, 14 AWG)for listening comparison against my stockcords(20 AWG) in turn. Contrary to some Audiogon postings, I noticed the greatest difference at the poweramp...please don't jump at me yet. The differences at the preamp and CDP are not noticeable. I tried to understand why was that, so on opening up the CDP, I saw it has some very good powerline filter circuits already builtin. Apparently the various conductor sizes did not improve on this already good filter, furthermore CDP do not demand large instanteneous AC current, so conductor size is not at issue...(Thats not all, more on CDP later when my study proceeds to insulation materials...) Back to the poweramp.. as the conductor size increases, the bass tone became more well defined and lower! It had a sort of "smoothness" and the treble's not affected in any way. That was exciting, but my 15A IEC could not take larger than 14 AWG. It's just slightly smaller than my wallsocket 20A wire. IMHO the better poweramp performance is indicative of quicker mainspower replenishing current rate at 50Hz/60Hz so having voltage stabilizing effect in its DC rectifiers and Storage capacitors. This is logical because the bass is clearly enhanced with larger conductors. I better comeup with some calculation to be tenable for AES to even consider. So for this moment I have 14AWG powercables for the poweramp and preamp, stockcord for CDP(to be further studied and post here when completed). Following is my DIY material list..Cable from local Belden shop marked as CSA LL7874 14-3 SJT 60C FT2 Shielded /14-3 SJT 60C (UL)E3462. (CSA/UL are Canada & USA standards respectively)..IEC 15A freesockets are from Farnell Components. Good luck.
Power Cord Advice
I have the following amps in my system, Acurus A250, A200, and A150. Would I realize a noticeable improvement in sound and dynamics with higher quality power cords. Also do other components in my system need upgraded power cords or just the amps. Thank you so much for your help. Rick