Do I need a power cable - if so what brand?

As a follow up to Jallen's post above, I have experimented with many power cords, and have found that Cardas is the very worst. It closed up my system, added grain, reduced the sonic picture, etc. Maybe it will work better in other systems, was very audibly just awful in mine.

Dave (Dlcockrum) -- Let me answer your well phrased thoughts about my not validating my opinion via experimentation by drawing an analogy to the businesses you have successfully managed. You were no doubt required to frequently and almost continually make decisions as to what tasks should be given priority in allocating limited personnel, time, and financial resources. In so doing you used reasoned judgment that drew upon your experience and education, and upon analyses and thoughts that others may have presented to you.

Similarly, I choose to allocate my audio-related investments of time and money to where my judgment tells me it is most likely to be most productive. That is why I choose to not devote time and money to assessing the sound of power cords.

I cannot explain why many sincere and intelligent people believe that they hear significant differences between power cords. I do feel, though, that the marketing hype surrounding them is generally techno-babble that fails to provide a rational correlation between the cord design and the claimed sonic effects. Therefore, as I implied in my earlier post, if there indeed are effects, they are likely to be system-dependent, they are likely to be findable only through trial and error, and they are likely to have no signficant correlation with price.

Regards,
-- Al

Hi Al,

You are correct: I did (and do) make decisions based largely on my intuition and judgement. However, I also remain open to input and give the opinions and experience of subject-matter experts high priority in the decision matrix. Then, I often test both my intuition/judgment and the recommendation of others on a limited scale before fully investing.

Why not try a Tel Wire or Synergistic Research power cord on your CDP (at no risk) and see for yourself. I would be interested to hear what you think.

Best Regards,
Dave

Wow, thanks guys for all the responses. Last night I had an opportunity to test the system with and with out power conditioner. I hooked Yamaha receiver directly to the wall outlet and let other components (CD player, ML Grotto subwoofer) connetced to power conditioner.

When I switched between power conditiner and direct wall, I did hear a clear difference in low and high frequencies. When connected to power conditiner, subwoofer sound is much tight, precious and clean. Also, high frequencies were very forwarding. I didn't hear any difference in mids.

Based on my limited testing, I could say power conditioner did improve sonic. I will do more listening over this weekend.

Also, I found out that the wiring that supply the power to my syetem is shared with only other outlet - that's being used for lighting. So, if I turn off the lighting (while using the system) or re-direct the lighting wire to some other source, could I say I have a dedicated line to audio system?. That outlet voltage consistently remains between 120-121 haven't seen gone below 120 yet.

As suggested here, I will do home-trial of few power cables and report the result here. If I were to do that, should I replace the one from wall to power conditioner or power conditioner to receiver or both?. I will also try direct from wall.

Please note that I go by my ears and not by any measuring equipment.

Dave -- Thanks for your response and your suggestion. I'll try to do that, perhaps in a couple of months because right now my pre-amp, amp, and phono cartridge are all in the process of changing, and obviously I want to become thoroughly familiar with the sound of the new components before trying to evaluate subtle cable differences.

Satiger -- I'm wondering if perhaps the reason the receiver sounded better through the conditioner was not the fact that it was connected through the conditioner per se, but the fact that it was then connected through the same path as all of the other components. I presume that the conditioner has some inductive as well as capacitive filtering in it. The inductors would be in series between the ac line and whatever components are plugged into the conditioner. But when you plug the receiver directly into the wall, with the other components plugged into the conditioner, the inductors create an isolation at high frequencies (probably much higher than audio frequencies) between the ac power and neutral going to the receiver, and the ac power and neutral going to everything else. It's hard to predict what sort of sonic effects that might lead to, but it seems conceivable to me that that could be the cause of the differences you heard.

I have always used a mundane but good quality power strip/surge suppressor to protect my system from lightning strikes, power surges, etc., with all components being plugged into it. Corresponding to the question you raise at the end of your last post, I'd welcome opinions from the others as to where a quality power cord would be likely to do the most good -- between each component (or at least the most critical ones) and the surge suppressor or conditioner, or between the suppressor/conditioner and the wall, or both.

Regards,
-- Al