New power cords for M/L Aerius

I needed quite long cords for my Logans and so did not want to get carried away with cost. I could get hold of two long pairs of XLO PC, one pair being the black cheap one, and the other being the purple expensive one - can you tell I am not good with model numbers? After lengthy listening - over two months - I concluded sadly that the purple pair had to stay - and I did not want purple snakes in the room, believe me. The following comments are an attempt to explain how the PCs sounded in relation to one another. The stock cord sounded less open, a little recessed with a tad of glare. The black XLO sounded more open, was not recessed, a little thick through the upper bass and lower mids, and a bit electronic/hard/bright on top. The improvement over the stock cord was a trade-off. The stock cord sounded right, but had lower resolution. There was definitely more going on with the Black XLO but I don't know that I would be happy to live with its lack of balance. The purple cable was balanced top to bottom with significantly more detail - but not in a forced way, just very naturally detailed, you could relax into the music more. Images were larger and more solid. The purple XLO was definitely better, and well worth the expense. It could be criticised for being perhaps a little dynamically reticent, but this could be unfair as others might argue its dynamics are more natural. Certainly leading edges are not slowed. The other criticism is that backgrounds are not as black as you might hope and there was a feeling the purple XLO adds a little bit of a soft grain. Having said all that, I found these PCs had less effect (say 50%) than when applied to amplifiers etc.

A cheaper way to go is to clip on a small ferrite block at the speaker end of the stock power cord. Big speakers are big antennas.

I did try the ferrite clamp idea, but it was not as significant as the PC treatment by a long way - but potentially beneficial. With the purple XLO I found there was no meaningful advantage to the clamps.

I have a pair of NBS cables that I ran for years on my Soundlabs and just recently replaced them with an upgraded NBS. They were substantialy better than the stock power cords, fuller sound, lowered noise floor, better dynamics and more resolution. E mail me and I'll make you a good deal on the older NBS.

Bryceeboy,

Check your email

Mitch