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The Truth About Power Cords and there "Real" Price to Performance

This is a journey through real life experiences from you to everyone that cares to educate themselves. I must admit that I was not a believer in power cords and how they affect sound in your system. I from the camp that believed that the speaker provided 75% of the sound signature then your source then components but never the power cord. Until that magic day I along with another highly acclaimed AudioGoner who I will keep anatomist ran through a few cables in quite a few different systems and was "WOWED" at what I heard. That being said cable I know that I am not the only believer and that is why there are so many power cord/cable companies out there that range from $50 to 20-30 thousand dollars and above. So I like most of you have to scratch my head and ask where do I begin what brand and product and what should i really pay for it?

The purpose of this discussion to get some honest feed back on Price to Performance from you the end user to us here in the community.

Please fire away!


 


128x128blumartini
glupson
7,842 posts
 
"...a $75,000.00 TROY ELITE NG ground conditioning unit."
There must be a town of Troy somewhere trying to find $75000 in the next year's budget to improve stability of electrical grid.
cheeg's avatar
cheeg
241 posts
 
@millercarbon -- thanks, as usual, for your clear and useful advice; just wish I had read it before buying AZ Tsunami's!
blainer55
47 posts
 
Well, since the first 25 - 100' or more of cable in your house is most like 12 or 14 gauge solid core romex, shouldn't we just keep it all the same and use more of that?  Nice conductivity, parallel conductors separated by a bare ground wire, simple!
boxer12
8,655 posts
 
blainer55,
I've tried to logically make sense of why a power cord would make a difference and agree with you that they shouldn't. The thing is, in my system they do. I've never gone full hog on them but have tried, oyaide, synergistic, acoustic revive, cerious, pangea, cardas, & tributaries (probably forgetting a couple here). They all sound different. From a value standpoint, cerious & synergistic are great. They are very well rounded and clear throughout. Acoustic Revive are the best I've heard (great synergy in my system) to this point. Very transparent but also more expensive. 
atdavid
736 posts
 
I think there is more practical value in dodgealum's post than most other posts in this thread. What you are plugging into is going to make a much bigger difference than anything w.r.t. equipment interactions. Some observations:

  • Good shielding is never going to hurt a power cord.
  • A good ground between equipment is almost never going to hurt.
  • You can make a better ground connection between your equipment with $100 of braided copper strapping and $5.00 of serrated washers than $10,000 of cables.
  • A lower resistance AC (line/neutral) connection will result in More EMI
  • A lower resistance AC (L/N) connection will likely result in More high frequency noise generated on the DC rails of the equipment
  • A lower resistance AC (L/N) connection will likely result in less low frequency ripple on the power rails of a power amplifier.
  • The power supply rails of a low power piece of equipment will probably have less total noise on them with a more resistive AC (L/N) connection.
  • A low resistance AC connection (L/N) between your power amplifier and your other equipment will allow the power amplifier to dirty the AC more on your other equipment, than a high resistance between the two (but you want the ground to be low resistance).
  • A low resistance (heavier gauge) wire from your main breaker panel to your equipment/power amplifier will reduce the amount of lower frequency AC line noise your power amplifier will generate (where your equipment is) but will increase the high frequency noise.
  • There is no guarantee that an engineer/designer at a boutique audio company is highly competent at power supply design or even knows/understands all the points made above.
  • If you are wondering where the bottleneck is in your system, it is highly likely that it is your speakers or the room, and maybe your source.
dodgealum1,030 posts11-13-2019 5:09pm

So, what I learned from this experience is that the price-performance ratio depends on more than the cable alone--that the design of what you are plugging into (and probably the quality of the power coming out of your outlet) can alter the performance considerably, skewing the ratio depending on the application.

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