I have been a stickler about keeping power cables away from signal cables...on equipment ?

"I have actually rewired ( or had rewired by a tech ) a different path separating the power line to the audio line within the chassis, and hearing a cleaner background when listening to music through these products afterwards. "

Two comments:
1. Have you compared identical stock and rewired amps? If not, then you have no firm basis to demonstrate, at least informally, that there has in fact been a difference sonically. This is not so much a challenge to what you discuss in terms of hearing a difference, but an encouragement for you to test your own perceptions. Just as it is shocking to hear that there are no sonic differences between broken in and warmed up gear versus new and stone cold gear, so also you may be shocked to discover far less of a difference than you believe.

2. It sounds like this was not a truly apples to apples comparison, if the tech changed the amp in any physical way in regard to the power path. If there was any change to the power pathways, i.e. added wire, then it would not be demonstration of proximity, but of altering the power pathway. It would be interesting to learn whether the power layout was or was not altered. It depends, I think, on what you mean by "rewired a different path". :)

Finally, this could be a nice enhancement to amps, should it turn out to have efficacy when compared to a stock amp. Yet, the principle still would hold true that any given other amp of any particular design could outperform it. If you compared the rewired amp to, say, 6-10 others and found the rewired one consistently superior in a variety of systems, that would be impressive!  

I'd venture to say that it's all due to design, packaging and costs. Some makes will go so far as to put shielding, covers and walls inside an amp to segregate sections so they pollute each other. 

It's sad to think that someone will go to the trouble of designing something nice and then when they figure out how to package it, they just cram it all in without regard to placement and interaction.

Wasn't it normal for some vintage gear makes to have the inputs on the side of their integrateds and receivers? I wonder what the reasoning was behind that.

All the best,
Nonoise

DS....I hear differences of great magnitude after a substantial warm up of a piece of gear, as well as upgraded fuses. Based on your writings, we are quite different in our opinions. It is ok to challenge me on what I hear or what I think I hear, as I invite any and all comments to this thread. As far as connections on the sides of product, I believed it was for convenience for when they were placed in a cabinet or rack, but it does make sense in what I am talking about. 

All my components have, and as far as I know have had, the power coming in on one side and as far from inputs as possible. Especially critical in sensitive components like phono stages. Now this may well be due to the way all my components are selected on the basis of sound quality performance, and sound quality performance alone. I do not care for specs nor do I decide based on technical stuff like what parts are used or how they are laid out. Because while all these things are important, no one knows enough to know which is most important, or how doing one thing one way matters more than another way.  

All I know for sure is all the best stuff (as arbitrarily decided by me anyway) is built the way you describe. This is also a big factor in why receivers are the crappiest worst sounding components in all of audio- too much stuff crammed too close together. Never a good idea.

My system looks a mess but is laid out with a lot of spacing between cables, including keeping them all up off the floor. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 And yes these details do make a difference you can hear. 

When you have a neutral and live wire running side by side, the electrical fields are opposing and cancel out if the noise is what is called "differential", i.e. what we think of as current powering our equipment. Those fields because the wires are close dissipate really quickly.

There are other currents, common mode, which travel the same direction on both cables. That gets in via ground connections, through RFI etc.  That does not cancel out and can hence create a field that has a impact at larger distances. 


Good equipment will include circuitry to filter out both types of noise. It also depends on the signal levels close by. All digital circuitry will be more immune than line level signal, which will be more immune than a phono input.

I have my power cable, AES3 cable and ethernet cable all running parallel and strapped together from my speakers to where they separate and go to their particular device, streamer, switch and surge protector/ power conditioner. I kept them apart for awhile going back and forth never noticed a difference so I keep them neatly tucked together now.

Just for kicks, I looked at the backs of my components to see how far away the mains plugs are from the interconnect terminals.  All three -- my Mytek Brooklyn BB, my Primaluna Integrated and my Sony CD/SACD player -- have the power connection on the far left, with the component connections as far to the right as reasonably possible.  All this leads me to believe that keeping the mains supply as far as possible from the other connections is accepted practice.

I also believe, power switches and it's wiring, should be designed at the rear of a component, for the reduction of ac related noise, even though it might be an inconvenience with it's daily operation.

My Herron VTPH2A power switch is on the back right corner, right next to the iec. It is a bit of a hassle. But for all the right reasons.

Jeff Smith from Silversmith Audio offered this on another discussion group concerning his Fidelium ribbon speaker cables: he said to wrap them around power cord and hook them up to your speakers and see if you can hear ANY noise without running a source signal through it. He says you will not and therefor the proximity of his cables and power cords do not matter.

The back of my system is a mess of cabling, but they've never given me reason to be concerned. 

I also use a variety of different interconnects but it's the IXOS ones I particularly dislike for their (pre-ghost encounter) Scrooge-like nature. Extremely thick and tight.

I'm putting my trust in the ability of the various manufacturers to have provided decent shielding on each one. They certainly look thick enough.

I have noticed that my current TV antenna cable (co-ax) seems to have more shielding than in previous times, an extra layer of tin foil if I remember correctly.

Does it make a difference?  Not as far as I can tell.

The only cable that does worry me is the one bringing in the internet from the telephone socket. It looks extremely thin and I can't see how it could have much shielding. Still it's the one that came with the router.

Nevertheless when I once changed it for something more substantial (highly rated on Amazon) I found that my internet speeds dropped noticeably. I put that down to the upgraded cable having more individual wires inside than might be good for it.

Things didn't change overnight so it was back to the manufacturer supplied thin grey cable and the usual speeds (16-17Mbps) returned.

For some reason, I guess just for peace of mind, or just in case, I do keep it as far as I possibly can from the a/c power cable (another very thin one). 

Jeff Smith from Silversmith Audio offered this on another discussion group concerning his Fidelium ribbon speaker cables: he said to wrap them around power cord and hook them up to your speakers and see if you can hear ANY noise without running a source signal through it. He says you will not and therefor the proximity of his cables and power cords do not matter.

Brilliant. A dazzling display of logic! What I love about this is we can now also forget about not only noise but distortion. Because hook a cable up and run no signal through it, there’s no intermodulation distortion! No signal, no noise! Wala! Also no total harmonic distortion! This guys a freaking genius! All we have to do to remove noise from our systems is not run music through them~!

Sorry, but anyone thinks this Jeff Smith idea deserves anything more than ridicule, step right up. Defend away. Its garbage. (Also known as marketing, shilling, etc. Because he's talking about "his" cables. As if his and only his are able to defy the laws of physics. Dream on.)

I dress my signal cables so that they are as much as possible, far from and out of the way of the power cable. I was taught this practice since day one. Some equipment manuals explicitly suggest this. In my setup, sound difference is more obvious when it comes to my phono stage, and I use a LOMC cartridge. 

A whole lot of horse .... More neurotic thinking !  Find a recording studio look around, Cable risers are you kidding what a joke

That's an insult not an argument.

I've been told if they must touch they should do so at a 90 degree angle one against the other , never parallel

Studios are all differential. Jeff Smith's blurb is idiotic. Speaker cables ...

I have found that at the end of the day their is somhow a lot of cables in a snake nest behind the system. 
Therefore when it is hard to keep them all a part. I of just that reason keep all of my cables shielded. Both power and signal cables (and speaker cables also).
I think like this that a shielded power cable is not only hindering some noise going into the cable but more important it is also hindering the power cable to make electromagnetic field and disturbing the signal cables in the snake nest when the shield is making it to not radiate that much.
And of course the signal cables is also shielded so all the cables possibility to interfering into each one of the other ones is minimized. 
So that is another reason to use shielded power cables, not that it by it self is doing some magic maybe, it also have some benefit to the whole system indirectly it is another angle that is not discussed so much when often it is the cable it self that is studied and zoomed into, that it will not GET interference. But not what the cable GIVES for electromagnetic field to the environment. And guess what is near in their natural habitat in practice. Yes as we know the snake nest.
But if this has any practical benefit more than a  piece of mind I do not relly known. :D

I too try to keep all of my cabling as separate as possible, but to some extent one can only do so much. I think of it as a best practice type of thing. Might not really help, but certainly can’t hurt.

Correction Millercarbon, 'these things all make difference YOU think you can hear in a non-blind comparison.'

As we age...Rock on..

I toss em this way and that, until I get some hum, then it's a chase, sometimes a long one.

but only had hum from power twice in all the years, and way back when, fm antenna hum (college days, t shaped twin leads taped to something this way or that. coax to real fm antenna solves that.

Some people have endless problems with noise of all types.  Others seem remarkably lucky in never or rarely experiencing such issues.  I have worked in several fields where power cabling in proximity to signal cabling is an unavoidable fact.  No matter the industry or issue the basic rules and guidelines appear to be universal.  I will throw together a list of some of the most basic procedures I have come across.  Any updates, edits or clarifications gratefully accepted.

1. Cables carrying different types of energy or very different levels can and do interfere with each other debating that is counter productive
2. Distance can attenuate interference as effectively and perhaps more reliably than shielding, anything that helps helps
3. Twisted pair data cables are common as unshielded UTP or shielded STP but are all designed to cancel noise via the 'twist' so shielding is considered to be 'as needed' rather then a general panacea 
4. In the cable and broadcast worlds shielding for co-ax serves functions beyond the audiophiles concerns so yes foil, braid, foil and braid, double foil and braid and solid shell co-ax all perform differently but maybe not in ways familiar to the audiophile
5. Cables running in parallel present the greatest risk of interference those lying perpendicular the least, remember this when you are forced to have different types of cables near each other. Sometimes a tricky routing problem can be gotten around by simply dropping a speaker cable across a power cable at precise right angles instead of killing yourself trying to keep them apart. Not actually recommending this, keep them apart if at all possible but that's a slippery phrase as we all know
6. RFI can be so difficult that people have moved because of it but there is a clue.  Strong RF fields in one spot can often be hard to detect a short distance away and even standing nearby can make a change.  When you hear a local FM station through your phono stage the cables usually get the blame and they are usually guilty but sometimes they get help.  I had a MC phono stage that always played a local station whenever the input cables were connected.  Disconnecting the TT end, changing cable orientation, changing cables all made changes but nothing got rid of it.  When I swapped out the phono stage it was GONE!  Tried the cables that were worse earlier, moved them around etc. NO RFI.  So, lets blame the phono stage.  Except, the phono stage picked up no RFI unless cables were connected to the input so it looks like the kind of complex interaction that can drive you nuts (yes I know:))

Yes some people have problems..
I have this year built a new upper floor on a new house (2012). (So new wires)
Have installed proper fuzes and so on.
My power amps is off grid and driven by a 12v car battery.
I use a passive preamp (do not need power)
Beside that the TT motor get power from the wall the RIAA preamp is the ONLY thing that in the signal chain that is connected to the wall/mains.

And of course I get all the clicks and pops when someone is turning off/on the lights or appliances somewhere in the house if they are on the same phase. As my system.

And a vinyl rig do not need additional clicks/pops!

So I am thinking of how to get the RIAA stage offline somehow.. (?).. But the PCB wants ±15v.

Hello,
I think it boils down to your cables and the resolution of the system. When I started getting into better components and cables I figured out the difference in recordings. 1/2 of my CD collection was from BMG. Horrible sounds came through my new system. Luckily I was able to trade all of my BMG for the regular/ better recordings since a friend owned a used cd store. I can’t even fathom listening to some of your systems in your properly treated rooms. It’s a double edge sword that’s worth it if you can afford it. If I can make it to Seattle someday I can finally listen to Michael’s record collection. He might make me clean some of his records for the right to do so. JK. Bottom line, If you raise or separate your cables like in MC’s picks and you hear the difference, do it. If it doesn’t move on to the next suggestion. 

Optimize, Demo the Puritan power conditioner. It might help. Demo it first because they are not cheep but the do work without choking the sound. 

@hshifi thanks for the tip.
Need to see what i could do abut it I am little bit of a DIY:er. But there is some other projects in the pipe.

Optimize,
a bipolar +- 15v battery supply is a relatively simple affair. It might get sticky adapting it to your circuit.

Cheers, Crazy Bill

Perhaps I missed it, but I don't see anyone considering that vibration in the cables/cords are as big or bigger a factor in degraded sound performance as electrical interference.  I keep my power cables as far as reasonably possible from my ICs and speaker cables because I can. My experience over the years is that it does make an audible difference with certain brands and models of cables.  I don't find it makes much difference with my current cables, but that's part of the reason I chose them.  Isolation from vibration is a different story.  The power cords seem least affected, the speaker cables definitely benefit from vibration isolation, and the ICs are the most sensitive.  When something sounds "off" nowadays, I invariably find one of my cable separators has gotten knocked loose allowing an IC to contact a wall or some other source of vibration.  It's an easy and immediate fix.  I'm meticulous about keeping isolation factors from affecting my components and it pays off.  It's much simpler and far less expensive to keep the cables from picking up vibration via careful routing and relatively inexpensive cable isolators/separators.

For genera;l principles, I have my amps to the side of my other components.  The Turntable is on the left, along with the MC head amp.  Next are the preamps, then the tuners, under  the CD player.  Yes, there are no speaker wires next to anything, except for being plugged into the amps that have inputs on the back and speaker outs on the sides. The amps are a foot away, with the speaker wires going through the wall to the listening room.  Does it really make the system sound better. Who the H... knows, but it pleases me, and doesn't hurt anything.  Why two tuners?  One to find stations, and one to listen, because I sold my KT-917 due to a panic about digital FM coming, and have one that sounds a bit better, but is a pain to use.

I would think if cable vibrations were a problem then the big heat sinks of solid state amps would be an even bigger problem. Maybe that's why tube gear isn't as bright sounding, just a thought if everything makes a difference.