Power Cords - Shielding or No Shielding

Many cables and cable mfger's design their cables for specific application. How many times have you read that a cable worked great on a DAC, but wasn't as impressive when used on a amp or P/conditioner

Low level and digital componets would have slightly different requirements than high current (amps) and power conditioners. Low level and digital componets seem to like shielded cables that are very linear. They seem to like very stable (linear), noise free, current. Amps and P/Conditioners on the other hand are less fussy about shielding and seem to like larger gauges to bring in more current. The power supplies in Amps (if properly designed)with bipass caps or filters, and their rectifying circuts can handle the on line noise better, so may require less shielding. P/conditioner by design are supposed to be able to eliminate most on line noise. Funny thing, how many times have you read about a P/Conditioner being improved by the power cord feeding it.

Just check out some of the PC cord mfger's, Elrod has a EPS2 for low level and a EPS3 for high current, JPS has various models and some specific for digital(probably has a small shunt filter from the neutral to ground) Shunyata and CH Venhaus also make application specific cables and check out Wolff Cables who makes a different source and gain cable with a carbon shield.

One other cable mfger I would like to mention is Essential Sound Products. Their cables work equally well on source and high current (one cable fits all) and this has been commented on in a number of reviews in the past.

Do you still have that silver and black 1957 corvette???

HTH Dave

Yes, generalizing, shielding is more useful on front end components than power amps. The LAT info is a decent primer, but doesn't offer much in depth. That's ok.
There is widespread agreement that fluorocarbons' (Teflons)
very low dielectric involvement is superior for ALL cables, including AC power. Yet affordable, shielded, all-Teflon cable exists for DIY'ers or small producers. It is indeed possible to assemble yourself VERY high performance PCs for well under $75, or buy finished comparable ones from $75-$200. Above that price lies retail markup and marketing hype for questionable incremental improvement. (DISCLAIMER: I'm the mule who stocks Teflon cables to get DIY PCKits to you guys.)
Cabling is indeed system-specific, but predominantly because spectral effects result from top-octave rolling by use of different (and often cheaper) insulations...or magnetic (!) stuffers. Clever marketing of specific designs for component function type (except where total AWG gauge is correllated with current demand, or true need of shielding) is specious, at best, however. When one says that a PC sounds great on one component but not another it's more apt to be about shielding issues or a spectral effect that occurs on a particular component (audio signal carrying) vs one that doesn't (transport or tt motor), rather than that the cable is actually designed for a particular application. Why would one bother, except to purposely roll off top octave linearity, of which I abhor.
Room treatment and speaker selection are far better avenues to spectral harmony than a molassesy power cord, IMO.
Can a cable be TOO linear? Too "open", or too "black" sounding from having too wide a bandwidth or low noisefloor. Not in my book. I'm trying to debunk some myths here without personal marketing. Hope this helps a bit. Ern

Look at the news letters on the Bryston site about power cords. I have to agree, how can the last 6 or so feet provide anything after 50 or so feet of regular old wire from the breaker panel. Hell, I think we need to use gold plated contacts in the breaker panel. I have not found a single engineer that will buy into this stuff electrically unless he is in the cable making business! Once something is on the wire, it is on the wire. It's not going to filter anything out. What about all that wire to the plug? I suppose everthing is benign until the last few feet.
Sorry, but I just can't by into this stuff. If you hear an improvement, support your cable manufacturer.

Ernie, you may want to change your moniker to subaruandcableguru. A question, I have picked up some large gauge OCC power cord, about 35 feet of it. Along with 4 OCC IEC plugs.

Is there anything you recommend me wrapping the outside of this cable with, for shielding purposes or otherwise? I have noticed that when playing with some Lowther drivers, I am picking up some noise, but haven't spent enough time with it to be sure where. My goal is to make sure that the power cords are not adding any noise to my system. They will potentially be used anywhere in the system, for digital, preamp, or power amp.

Also, I have some brass plated hospital grade AC mains plugs, but they don't look to be up to the same level as the other two components, which plug do you recommend, if you would be so kind?

Thanks so much,
Joe

If you have an old house with BX wire, your power is shielded, up to the wall plug. Maybe people who like shielded power cords ought to use BX instead of Romex wire when they install dedicated lines.