Carl, I can more than empathize with your lack of time. I often wish I'd win the lottery(I don't play), just so I can dedicate myself to full time stereo fun. My next move is an interconnect shootout for my Jadis amp. Then speaker cable. I'll move on to power cable after that. I'll rig up a bunch, and compare them(along with the silver cord I'm currently using) to the SR. This will happen probably in the late fall, but I'll get to it. And I'll be around in the meantime. We may someday write the book!
Thoughts on Kacz's ac cord
This is Kacz's home-built, and inexpensive Romex brand 10 gauge x 3 (the third being the ground), solid core copper power cord, with very nice Leviton male plug, and I forget which female plug...........................Let me first say that the cord was too short to use in my main system with speakers, so I tried it with my HD-600's, Musical Fidelity X-Cans (and psu power supply), and the Resolution Audio CD50. The main thing I found was that it DID sound better NOT plugged into the Chang 6400 CLZ filter, which surprises me a little. I must credit Todd with this, because he said it would be this way. The large and stiff solid core conductors must have a little bit of the hf noise supression inherent in their conductors, because I don't believe Todd (Kacz) has done anything additional with the ground wire for filtering. It certainly let more of the dynamics thru (the cable's strongest trait), to plug it into the wall.............................The Sound I got in the context above: Quite dynamic, not very resolving of detail, soundstage depth and width a little constricted, not particularly adept at the "rhythm and pace" factor, tonally NEUTRAL (except for a very slight emphasis of the 4 khz presence region, evident on vocal sibilence), and perhaps a tad of a blurry sort of grain overlaying music through the whole frequency range (this didn't necessarily jump out at me, though). I compared it with three other expensive cords that I happen to be auditioning: the Shunyata Black Mamba ("original" if that has any meaning for you), the Synergistic Reference, and the ESP Essence. The "musical background" was not very quiet, and the air around instruments not very clear. The separation of instruments, and imaging specifity, were not on par with these other hundreds-of-dollars power cords. HOWEVER, this was admittedly an UNFAIR comparison, and the dynamics and "weight" of images, the decent macro dynamic contrast and bass extension, and the (mostly) tonal nuetrality of Kacz's cord, FOR THE LOW COST of the parts to assemble it, make it very interesting nonetheless. To sum up, basically it primarily only lacks the detail retrieval and the overall refinement (in all performance aspects) that you (usually) get when you pay hundreds for an AC cord. If this were the only cord I could use in my system, I would, and would likely still listen as often as I do than with the more costly choices I've made, and am making, with regards to cable choices......................I need to try a homemade cord myself, but not an ac cord. What I need is a large gauge DC cord for my X-Cans. If I like it, then I could make another one for my linestage (which only gets used for vinyl listening, currently)....but I digress.................I WELCOME THE THOUGHTS OF OTHERS WHO HAVE BUILT THEIR OWN POWER CORDS, or any cables...or even on AC cords in general.
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