Power cord upgrade

Just watch this and learn something

instantaneous current draw

I like to learn, so I watched.

Besides the fact that wire gauge is never mentioned in the video, I was surprised that that crappy PC power cord had a measured .5kA transient current delivery capability. That's 500A, which should cover pretty much any audio-related use case many times over.

Why did Shunyata choose to highlight such a useless metric rather than real-world ones like resistance and temperature increase and voltage drop under sustained high-current use? Unless I'm missing something, it's almost as if they're going out of their way to give critics more ammunition by creating the impression that a crappy PC power cord is more than capable of doing the job, even though we know that overall it is not.

Well, folks, it gets better.

The unit used in the Shunyata video is an Ideal SureTest circuit analyzer model 161-64. I’m remotely familiar with this unit, which in my world is used by building inspectors to detect bootleg grounds that go undetected by regular circuit testers. It is strictly a power line testing tool that has nothing to do with audio.

In the video Caelin uses the ASCC setting of the 161-64, purportedly to demonstrate the current-carrying superiority of his power cable over a random PC power cord, something that should not necessitate professional testing equipment but I digress.

Here is a quote from the 161-64 manual:

ASCC Measurement The SureTest calculates the Available Short-Circuit Current (ASCC) that the branch circuit can deliver through the breaker during a bolted fault (dead-short) condition. The ASCC is calculated by dividing the line voltage by the circuit’s line impedance (hot + neutral). Depressing the side arrow ( ) displays the worst-case scenario where all three conductors (hot, neutral, ground) are shorted together -- the neutral and ground provide a lower impedance via a parallel return path. Note that this second test will trip a GFCI. See the following equations for clarification. ASCC1 = Line Voltage (VHN)/ (Hot Ω + Neu Ω) ASCC2 = Line Voltage (VHN)/ (Hot Ω + 1/(1/Neu Ω+ 1/ Grd Ω)

Again: "the current that the branch circuit can deliver through the breaker during a bolted fault (dead-short) condition".

In other words, the video experiment tells us that a random PC power cord would fail at 500A in a dead short-circuit situation vs the Shunyata cord’s 1000A or so.

This is without a doubt absolutely true, but here is how Shunyata spins it in its literature:

DTCD (Dynamic Transient Current Delivery) analyzer

DTCD is a method of current analysis that measures instantaneous current delivery in the context of a pulsed current draw. in layman’s terms, it is a way of measuring current performance into typical electronic component power supplies.

Sure! If you happen to weld your hot, neutral and ground wires together, as one does 😂🤣

And then this:

DTCD Current measurement: This measurement depicts the difference in available impulse current between Shunyata’s Venom-3 power cord ($99 retail) and a standard black component power cord. Note the enormous difference in the quantity of current available compared to the stock power cord. The stock power cord delivers only 47% of available current compared to 84% with a Venom-3 power cord. By any standard of measure, this is statistically significant.

It is certainly not significant to a component’s sound quality, if nothing else because it describes an event that has a near-zero chance of happening in a listener’s lifetime (a dead short) and if it did, that component’s sound quality would be the least of its owner’s worries.

I hate to say this and bring more grist to critics’ mill, but it’s probably safe to say that in this particular video at least Caelin shows little respect for his viewers’ / customers’ intelligence.

Here is the 161-64 product page in case yall care to take a delve.