Looking at the construction of high end power cords… amp oriented tend to carry 10 gauge or probably more in some cases. Digital and low current have an emphasis on noise reduction using smaller gauge with elaborate layerings. But each company like the major suppliers of Transparent, WireWorld, Audio Quest, and Cardas each have their own approach. Cardas for instance seems to favore heavier gauge for all power cords. Shunyata varies the gauge between applications.
What size power cable?
How “big” does a power cable need to be for upstream components? I get that amps can benefit from a large cable to carry plenty of current, e.g. 8-11 awg. Although my preamp and phono preamp have robust power supplies, they can’t possibly benefit from such capacity, can they? Extreme overkill is the norm in hi end, but is there any benefit to more than 12 or 14 awg on a preamp or phono preamp? Much less digital components.
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At a minimum, use a decent 10 or 12 gauge OFC cable on low power components. I use these and they are great for $35 for 3 feet. They have a rhodium version too. |
12 ga wire can carry 20 amps, so as far as "size" goes, anything larger is simply a waste of money. There is no benefit in hooking up a cable that can provide more power than your equipment is abel to use? As for design, shielding, covering, flexability, the devil is in the details. Have a look at the cables made by Puritan out of the U.K. Intersting design and as floppy as a wet noodle. Just one suggestion. |
@lloydc - It’s not really the gauge that dictates how well a power cables performs on any specific components, but the type of copper, the gauge and type of the wire, the insulation and the cable geometry. As an example, my DIY Source Power cable uses a 2 x 18 gauge Solid UP-OCC wire for the live conductor - that’s equivelent to 15 gauge, but the fact that it uses solid wire boosts its current carrying capacity to a much highrer level, than what a 15 gauge stranded wire could support. My cables for power components use 2 x 14 gauge Solid UP-OCC wire - that’s equivelent to 11 gauge. The other thing about using a lighter gauge wire
Many cable providers simply build a single duty cable and do not bother to provide cables rated for source components, probably due to the additional invetory they would have to keep on hand. I use a smaller gauge to save money, because I buy wire by the foot and as a DIYer I want to save as much as possible and the light gague wire can reduce the cost of a cable by a signficant amount But there are some companies out there that provide source power cables, so shop around. Hope that helps - Steve |
Most of the posts are listing to use heavy gage wires. The wires from your circuit breaker to your outlet are most likely Romex 14-2. These are solid copper. We use stranded power cords because they are flexible, not because they are better.
Your amplifier will only momentarily require high power at real high sound passages. You most likely have 100,000Mf of storage inside of your amplifier to handle these.
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^^^This. You must demo cables. A large gauge cable will not necessarily sound better than a smaller gauge cable on an amp or DAC or anything, the reverse of course applies too. |
Thanks for the responses. I made a cable using Furutech's DPS 4.1 (11 awg) and plugs, and it sounds very nice. It's hard to imagine how much better a power cable could be, but I'll never be in the market for anything like a Nordost Odin 2, Shunyata Omega. Not quite as easy to make as in the instructional video, there was a learning curve (and some tools to buy; the crimper took some practice; and a Hagerman FryBaby), but I eventually got it perfect (with do-overs, it came out a few inches shorter than planned.) |
