Just got back into audio a short while ago, and would have said that PC's were the Audiophile equivalent of a penis extension. ...Then I actually listened to a few PC's. First were my local dealer's home brew - hubbel terminated, but no better than the stock PC's. Next I borrowed an XLO reference 10a - what a difference. This was far from subbtle. A student who does work for me wanted to know what I had done to the stereo, because it sounded "different" "better" "as though a sheet of paper had been removed from in front of the speakers." This cliche from a highschool kid of 16 years who is not into audio. After the XLO I went on to audition JPS PC's. I recently jumped off the deep end and purchased 4 Shunyata Research PowerSnakes. And YES they sound different (better IMHO) than any of the others I tried. In fact 2 out of the 4 I demoed sound differently on the same equipment (Sim Audio/Goertz/NHT). I too am far from any kind of electrical expert, but Calin Gabriel at Shunyata is. He makes significant arguments (via his website www.powersnakes.com)as to why well designed PC's make a difference in sound quality. While goblin and others may not experience the sound improvments I have the only way to know for sure is to listen - if you are able to keep an open mind. Mike
The fallacy of ac treatment
I see a lot of threads related to managing and tweaking the ac powerout end of electronic systems. Much has been said about dedicated wiring, termination and even the right kind of extension cords to use. I work for an electric utility; and that's the extent of my credibilty here. The majority of you will no doubt be far more erudite wrt music hardware. Just a thought, though: domestic ac distribution goes thus: power station-step up-city-step down-subdivision-final step down. As far as the utility is concerned, you and all your neigbours are collectively the load for the step down tranformer. Any inductance/capacitance created by your neigbour running motors/tubelights, etc is felt by the lot of you. Additionally, the voltage frequency will almost always move around a tolerance from 50hz as the whole country turns on the air, off the lights - changes all the time as peaker plants ramp up etc. Nothing can change that- the frequency of the grid supplying your city is the frequency in the mains at your house. So what's my point? Well only that how much difference can the last 10 feet of cabling, etc make when the other hundreds of miles are outside of your control? And more importantly, frequency is one of the most imp parameters for measuring electricity quality (your expensive hand-coiled toroids are entirely subject to the f in the primaries) and nothing other than running an f generator can shield you from that. Methinks all the improvements you see from ac cord treatments are pyschosomatic. But that's cool.