I was just pondering power cords today . I started wondering what kind of power cords come with expensive gear . Over A few grand up to cost no object pieces . If they come with run of the mill black rubber shielding cords i can convince myself to never buy an aftermarket power cable again .
Any owners of said equipment or with knowledge on this subject please chime in .
Ibought the REGA ISIS valve cdp and REGA OSIRIS integrated amp this past year. Each came bundled with a high-end power chord custom made for REGA by hi-end mfg. Klotz in Germany.
With the REGA kit, these bundled power cables actually outperform my other hi-end power chords terminated with either the top-of-the-line gold-plated FURUTECH or OYAIDE connectors.
The latter are crackin' good power chords by any standard (I've swapped them in and out with the REGAs)...it's just that the factory supplied REGAs work better with the REGA gear.
You just hit the nail on the head...and that is all you need to power up that amp/pre that so many here just spent a small fortune on. If that expensive highend amp/pre needed an after market anaconda power cord to sound it's best? Then the designers of said gear never heard their design at it's best..does that make sense?
It makes more sense for the expensive amp maker to include the cheap black one and NOT increase the cost of the amp then let the new owner spend whatever on whatever he wants IF they feel they make a difference.
Of the 2 camps:
The Believers will want to choose their own sound/flavor.
The Non-Believers will be glad they didn't have to pay extra for snake oil.
Onemug is correct. Expensive gear just comes with a regular stock cord. A company's $30,000 amp will come with the same cord as their $3,000 amp. Their thought process is just as Onemug described.
I've talked to a couple of designers, and it's not that they feel that power cords do not matter, but they know that their customers are probably not going to use their stock cord anyway. Since they don't know what each individual consumer will prefer, they just leave that decision up to the end user.
At least they still throw a power cord in the box, they don't bother putting interconnects in the box anymore.
I second what the previous two members said, and add the following:
The best power cord for audiophile purposes will be the best conductor of low frequencies and the best impediment to high frequencies, without restricting dynamics. Stock power cables are not very good in either respect. Indeed, I don't know any stock power cord that features any sort of high frequency rejection or attenuation. High frequency attenuation is important simply because the high frequencies that travel along power cords into your gear are the most invasive of frequencies: they are perhaps the most limiting factor to system performance. So, even if expensive gear comes with a basic power cable, these other reasons exist—independently of whether expensive equipment comes with cheap power cords—to investigate the effectiveness of power cords.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but audiophiles generally accept that the quality of our gear's power supply has a significant impact on the end result of what we hear. For that reason alone, a serious music listener ought investigate the significance of the power cord. After all, as Robert Harley says (and others I'm sure), "from the gear's perspective, the power cord is the first six feet, not the last" (paraphrased). That is just to say that, despite it being at the end of hundreds of miles of electrical wiring, to the gear in question, the power cable is the most important wiring of it all.
I do not want a component maker to ship a component with an expensive cord and charge me for it! No, thank you!
I will select the cord which matches best and is complementary to my rig. It would be a mistake for these companies to supply a cord which may sound good on their voicing system(s) but may not in fact be a fantastic cord.
Component makers without expertise in cabling should do exactly as they are, supplying a basic cord. Of course, this doesn't give anywhere near the performance potential of the component, but it's a lot better than leaving selection of power cables up to people who have no idea what your rig is and what sounds good to you! If component makers supplied high end cables, depending upon the cables that could actually be a negative, paying for a device which would hinder performance.
And, yes, some component designers/manufacturers are clueless about cabling. :(
A manufacturer of expensive gear may ship with a stock black cord. But that is not what they will use to demonstrated their gear at shows. Audio Research ships their reference Series with cheap stock cords but they use expensive Shunyata cables at shows and in their factory listening room.
This may echo some of the other responses but,I am glad they don't offer more than a adequate powercord. That give me the option to buy what I prefer. The debate about powercords can go on forever and a equipment manufacturer would be foolish to enter into that with a prejudice for one brand or another. I am not debating the effectiveness of aftermarket powercords, as I have on on 90% of my equipment. And I have a brand preference and would not like that idea that I paid an extra 200 or 500 dollars for a PC that I wouldn't use and couldn't sell. I could sell it because, I would need to keep it to maintain all original equipmenty, packing and manuals for resale.
Compared to the much of the animal kingdom, human beings have pretty terrible hearing. We have poor powers of echolocation, especially for sounds that come from behind us, we can only hear a relatively narrow bandwith of 20Hz-20kHz, and we’re easily fooled by illusions.But perhaps the most convincing tricks are the ones we play on ourselves. Expectation is one of the most powerful forces in shaping our perception, and it’s the reason that the same wine tastes better if we’re told it costs $90 instead of $10. The same goes for our stereo systems if you show an audiophile an anaconda sized power cord and compare it visualy to an genric cord. Which one do u believe he/she will pick out as being the best sounding? This is why blind testing works best determining if changes made are viable.
Schipo, it's obvious that you despise this hobby, so why do you hang around here? I despise women's $5000 Coach handbags...guess what? I don't hang around on Coach handbag forums.
You come off as someone who is bitter and jealous that some have more money than you do. That may not be the case, but it is how you are perceived.
In recent years when I've purchased amplifiers the power cord that came with it seems to be identical to the Volex 17604 power cord now. The amps I bought had 14 AWG power cords had the name Baohing on them. When I ordered the Volex 17604 power cords from Newark they had the Baohing name on them as well. So maybe you may have a quality power cord right off the get go. j/k.
Now with more expensive gear I've seen some preamp and amp manufacturers work with a power cord maker and their cord would be included with the equipment.
If I was spending hard earned $$$ on really expensive gear I would want the power cord that the designer used to voice the gear. If not don't bother sending a power cord with it. There are so many power cord makers out there to choose from.
Jmcgrogan2, thanks for your spot on observations of Schipo's comments. No reason to insult those of us who know we are not being duped. If you're (Schipo) smarter then everyone else on this site, perhaps your rare wisdom is better used elsewhere.
I'm always hoping the cheaper cable sounds better, I didn't want the after market power cord to improve the sound of my system. But unfortunately that wasn't the case.
There was a time when a lot of high end gear came with captured power cords and plugs and we all thought it sounded great. As the cable business grew, fewer and fewer captured power cords. Not a coincidence. I have found a bigger difference in one record to the next than I ever have from one power cord to the next. But there is a difference and if somebody wants to buy a $10k power cord to experience that difference, have at it. Like Elizabeth, I can't hear beyond Pangea.
>>Audio Research ships their reference Series with cheap stock cords but they use expensive Shunyata cables at shows and in their factory listening room.
Possibly because they know that gullible, anal retentive audiophiles won't seriously listen to otherwise great audio gear unless it is connected to the hospital-grade power outlet via a power cord the approx. diameter of a well-stuffed kishka.
"Various accessories such as power cords, interconnects, power conditioners, and even more so major components such as speakers, as well as analog or digital front ends, often have a significant effect on the sound of a music reproduction system.
Unfortunately, the sonic effect of such products is very much system dependent, and their particular desirability is very much a function of the musical and sonic preferences of an individual listener.
Therefore, as company policy, JRDG refrains from recommending any third party components or accessory products over other ones."
It would not make sense to provide any other than good quality generic power cable IMHO.
Interesting responses. I assume what has been said about power cords also applies to fuses? The manufacturer should just supply the amp with a generic fuse on the assumption that an audiophile will replace it with one of their choosing. I imaging any tubes would also fall into this category. But where does it end? Should the manufacturer also assume that the audiophile user will replace the speaker binding posts, capacitors, power ICs, internal wiring, resistors, input sockets, etc.? Why have a production amp at all, just do it a la carte.
@Onhwy61, the upgraded fuses is a good question, because many of these manufacturers are already using exotic, boutique caps, resistors, diodes, internal wire, etc. The fuses fall more into that category, not costing hundreds, or thousands of dollars.
IMHO, the power cord, interconnects and speaker cables are a different category because so many of them are so much more expensive than high end caps, fuses, etc.
My expensive (for me) monoblocks came with POS PCs normally packaged with computers. Manufacturer shipped with these because he says everyone always ends up upgrading them anyway, so why bother trying to guess what each person will prefer. I agree, although this helps you not at all.
" ....it makes sense to provide an inexpensive power cord with any component. audiophiles like to tune their systems with after-market power cords...."
Not Always ....
REGA, LFD, and NAIM are among the few that provide (and recommend) their own high-end power cables for their high-end gear. As it was explained to me in general terms, they design / "custom tune" them for their kit.
Personally, the power cables that came bundled with my new REGA OSIRIS amp and ISIS cdp gear is a $200 - $300 range product custom made for them by KLOTZ in Germany. Top shelf construction here - nothing cheap here.
NAIM even has one much, much higher in the $$ range for their kit.
I was initially skeptical. Ultimately I was very pleasantly surprised that they out-performed my other expensive after-market OYAIDE, ECOSSE, and FURUTECH cables modded with their very expensive top gold plated connectors.
Again, the latter cords are still killer power cords in their own right that take on most comers; it's just that the REGA high-end cords worked best with the REGA gear.
These other power cables I faithfully still use as replacements in my B system and in my AV system with stellar results.
With my experience of 2 products: Conrad Johnson Premier 350 and Lamm ML2.1 both comes with standard looking cords but voiced to match their products. They confirmed that those cords were custom ordered with purpose.
Most of the higher end gear I purchased came with beefy power cords but nothing special . Fine tuning the sound with cords is such a personal preference that suppling an expensive cord would be in most cases fruitless .
Schipo, you're going to bust a lot of balloons, and rain on parades talking like that; but I've saved tons of money by buying equipment that's been reviewed by blind tests.
Before anybody goes off the deep end, I'm simply applying these formulas to power cords, and nothing else. That flakey AC coming out of the wall hasn't changed, and a power cord is not going to change it. A heavy gauge power cord with good connectors on both ends is going to work as well as any according to these laws. Now give me your "snake oil" explanation as to why yours is better than mine.
P = power (Watts)
V = voltage (Volts)
I = current (Amperes)
R = resistance (Ohms)
Electric Current Formulas I = V / R (2a)
I = P / V (2b)
I = (P / R)1/2 (2c)
Electric Resistance Formulas R = V / I (3a)
R = V2/ P (3b)
R = P / I2 (3c)
Electrical Potential Formulas - Ohms Law Ohms law can be expressed as:
V = R I (4a)
V = P / I (4b)
V = (P R)1/2 (4c)
Example - Ohm's law A 12 volt battery supplies power to a resistance of 18 ohms.
Orpheus10, your two posts make it appear as if you listen with your eyes. Relax, this isn't a pissing contest. No one's is better than yours, just as yours isn't better than anyone else's.
What does a pissing contest have to do with power cords? Your logic eludes me, but then again, nonsense is not supposed to make sense, maybe it's supposed to be funny?
01-28-13: Jmcgrogan2 Because I believe in an actual science of acoustics. I must despise this hobby? You sir are a naive idiot. Who in your ignorance believes in not a truth but what you consider the truth. It's your dough spend it as you like. But to ignore common sense and the natural laws of science is complete looney.
02-16-13: Schipo 01-28-13: Jmcgrogan2 Because I believe in an actual science of acoustics. I must despise this hobby? You sir are a naive idiot. Who in your ignorance believes in not a truth but what you consider the truth. It's your dough spend it as you like. But to ignore common sense and the natural laws of science is complete looney.
Now I'm gonna go buy some Stealth Sakra interconnects AND Nordost Odin speaker cables AND (5) Purist 25th Anniversary power cords, just to make YOUR head explode ....hahahahahahaha
Remember, your 'laws of science' are an ever expanding field of knowledge, based on what we currently CAN explain. As we humans continue to evolve, and our minds and comprehension continues to develop, the laws change. Your type existed several centuries ago too....and swore that the earth was flat.
Continue to limit your mind to the current limitations of science if you wish. You should not call others names who believe that the world is not flat though, for one day your 'science' may catch up and figure out how to measure what we are hearing.
By all means, continue to listen with your eyes, reading what some science report says you should hear. However, just because you choose to limit your mind to boundries set by the current limitations of scientific understanding, don't expect others to limit their minds as well.
There goes Schipo again , the non audiophile , knocking power cords because he is so rapped up in his preconceived science ideals that he can't hear clear and undeniable improvements in sound quality . Science can never explain the beauty of music , and only a dough head would try .
then y not pick out that favorite power cord of yours in a double blind test...u want to bet the farm on that 1...I am guessing u wouldn't put up a dime...I notice that most of u like to open a nice brew while listening to your favorite toons. I am guessing that it helps u forget how much you paid for that silver 3ft 5" in diameter power cord that's no better then the cord that came with that five figure amp...that most likely ain't no better then an amp costing far less..I know you all want to hear what you would like everyone to hear, that's so you can pat yourself on the back for being an outstanding individual. Maybe your mothers told you that you had divine powers, or you think you're a descendant of the amazing kreskin. Many debunked fortune tellers have been outed by James Randi. You can watch it on youtube and really feel somewhat embarrassed for them. As they the psychics do their best when straining their brains trying desperately with no better then a guess. I would love to see some of you sanctimonious fools fold like a cheap camera. Squirming and sweating buckets of water while you twist in your seats trying your best to pick out that divine cable that is no better than a two dollar a ft cable from HD. But in reality you will find fault with the test. Go back to your same old ways, thumbing your nose and digging into your pockets for fairy dust with a tinker bell mentality.
Well, FM Acoustics (their entry level amps start at $~20k!) come with hard-wired cords. So, no aftermarket cord can be used -- FMA recommends to just listen to the music & not worry about power cords. A different approach...
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.
