Power Conditioners: Audioquest Niagara 5000 or Shunyata Denali 6000S

@skyscraper, here are some thoughts on running romex or other rather simple cable directly from your breaker box to your conditioner vs running a high end purpse designed audio power cable from a wall socket to your conditioner.  From a current perspective, direct connection would be great.  From the perspective of any EMF around that cable that might interfere with other cables in the vicinity, perhaps not the best solution.  

Same goes (especially) for using budget power cables from a conditioner to your gear.  Why I hear you saying.  You just spent $4,000 to tidy up your power, so now its all good, right?  Yes and no, and the reason is that a power conditioner cleans up the power from the street, but can’t protect your low voltage/current signals in cables like IC’s and speaker cables from exposure to field effects from nearby high current power cables, even if the power running through those power cables is very “clean”.

As @inna says, good conditioning and good power (and other) cables work together, removing noise and reducing signal and field interactions, especially in crowded spaces near the back of each piece of gear or where low and high current wires come close to each other, cross, or heaven forbid, run in parallel.  Sorry to say its all potentially important.  

Best way to determine if it’s important enough for you to make additional investments is to try different power and other cables in your system once you select a conditioner.  Try the cable company lending library for a low cost way to trh before you buy.

I find that the better my gear gets, the bigger the benefits I hear from good power and other cabling. But frankly, good cables can make some even modest gear sound surprisingly better and good.

The better all your other cables are, the more likely your romex idea is to generate more potential benefits than penalties.

Knownothing, I’m listening to what you’re saying about low voltage cables picking up field effects from high voltage cables nearby, particularly when in close proximity. I’m trying to understand this. Would " field effects" be the same thing as EMI interference or something in addition as well?

Would using shielded power cables prevent them from emanating field effects? I had thought about a using shielded hospital grade 12AWG, 20 amp power cable to the power conditioner instead of the Romex, due to the possible code violation Cleeds brought to my attention. This would be in addition to audiophile quality shielded interconnects and speaker cabling. I don’t know how well shielding alone limits signal and field interaction. I thought about doing the same with the other power cables plugged into the power conditioner. Maybe the shielding is insufficient to do the job. I simply don’t know, but would like to learn. I was hoping with "clean" power I wouldn’t need to venture beyond simple shielded power cables for any device plugged into the power conditioner. Having read that would be sufficient, was a major prompt to acquire a power conditioner.  Maybe it's not true. 

I read a long "white paper" on cable design to try and better understand the issues involved, but can’t say I fully understood it without need for further studying on the subject. I wonder if running the power cables inside conduit would be of any benefit in limiting transmission of field effects? As I similarly mentioned in one of my posts my ignorance on the subject is fairly comprehensive. The subject is interesting though.

I did go ahead and purchase a second-hand Shunyata Denali 6000S last night from a dealer at a price I couldn’t pass up, approaching 50% off retail new, so all major components have now been purchased. Completing cable acquisitions comes next. Thanks for your explanations and advice. I found it helpful in trying to understand this complex subject.

Mike

Yes, I am referring to EMI.  I am not an electrical engineer so have only an audiophile’s interest in the subject and some trial and error experince under my belt including designing, assembling and using a few power cables.

That said I have experienced great benefits from power conditioning with audio in both dirty office environment, and with a relatively “clean” home power setting with dedicated circuit, breaker, 10 guage romex to high quality outlet.  

With the former, I could not get any kind of natural sound without separate power conditioners on the amp and then on all digital sources plus the sub.

At home I am running my amp and sub directly to dedicated wall outlets (few electric storms and power surges in my area), and all other analog and digital sources from dedicated outlet to qualty power strip with Shunyata Venom Defender which worked miracles on hum in my analog source and provides inky black backgrounds and good soundfield with no apparent reduction in speed of transients or slam for all sources.  My experience with this simple product should bode well for your use of the Denali.

I use a bunch of different cables including Shunyata Diamondback, but am very pleased right now using modestly priced digital and speaker cables from Audioquest and interconnects and power cables from Nanotec.  And I try to manage wires in the back to stay away from one another as much as is reasonable.  YMMV.

kn

The critcal issues for power cables are speed of current rise, current capacity, protection from external EMI and protection from creating excessive EMI.  Everything matters in this regard from to connectors to the conductors to the dialectric to the conductor configuration.  There are many different designs, and you just need to determine which is highest performing and cost effective solutions for you.

Typically, PCs for amps do not utilize shielding, while PCs for digital sources do.  

Shielding is used in digital power cables to effectively reduce RFI/EMI, important for keeping noise out of the cable, but also important to keep noise generated in your digital gear within the cable and harmlessly drained to ground.

Amp power cables typically do not incorporate shielding in order to maintain unrestricted macro and micro dynamics. Complicated geometries are often employed to concentrate the current towards the center of the conductor weave, providing some shielding from external sources, as well as mitigating radiation of RFI/EMI.