Review and Guidance into playing with power cord, strips, receptacles, and conditioners.

System Mirus DAC > Don Sachs Preamp > Odyssey Khartago Mono > JBL 4319.

I’ve read a few places that for amps, they are best used directly into the wall. I’ve tried the amp on a generic strip and the wall, and couldn’t hear much of a difference. Once I plugged in an ifi power purifier on the strip the system performance went down, the highs were gone, but you got more bass and balance.

After this I prefer when amps are placed directly in wall.

Power cords – I went with the preamp’s power cord as it is a pretty sensitive piece of equipment. The stock power cord sounded great to me, then I went to try a Pangea AC-9 cable on it. The stock power cord gives it an old sound. The soundstage is hollow, forward, and lively, like sound was being amplified in a venue. The AC 9 took away the hollow sound and replaced it with a more balanced and neutral sound. At first I notice the difference but didn’t have any specific preference, but my wife likes the AC-9 better as she likes smoothness. I’ve grown to enjoy the smoothness and neutral presentation. I’ve since ordered an Ice Age cable that is recommended by the preamp maker, and will be replacing my amp and dac cables with them.

iFi power purifier – I placed these on the old generic strip that connected my whole system and it had a negative impact on the amps, I then placed it only where it impacted the DAC, and it gave it some more bass and tighten things up a bit, not a dramatic difference.

Power strip – Furman PST-8, had now my DAC, preamp, and two subs plugged into it. The first listen was it produced a cleaner sound, but at a significant cost to dynamics. If I had just the PST-8 I would not have gone with it. I then went on to plug one iFI power on the first outlet, and the dynamics came back, I plugged in a second one after the preamp, to further isolate digital and analog, the dynamics were even greater.

Summary, after a bunch of power mods. My system originally had a forward lively sound, which made you feel if an amplified performance that was occurring in front. The bass was lively and had a pleasant decay, voices had an amplified mic sound, and the highs where accurate but might cause fatigue if constantly played in that range. The after sound is something I didn’t know my system could do. The sound is completely technical, to what a recording studio would see. The sound is neutral, highs are present, vocals are precise, bass is super tight. The most interesting thing was hearing audience clap, usually it’s just a flood of sound, but after the power stuff, you can place where each cap is coming from, it sounded like you were there at the venue, and the clap are extremely close to you. The placement of all instruments, voices, and location is crystal clear.

I plan to look for another power conditioner the PST-8D or something better, I am looking at the furutech GTX-D(R) receptacle.

I do like the novelty of all the current mods in place, because it is a sound I didn’t think a system could do, should I trade rawness and bloom for technical perfection?