Is it fine to bunch together power wires?


When organizing your equipment do you bunch together all or as many as you can of the power cords as possible?
todd1010
Depending on your system, your cables, and your ears, you may or may not notice a lot of difference. Standard freebie rubber power cords are probably crappy enough it may be hard to hear any difference. Some quality cables may be shielded so there may not be much difference there either. Haven't compared enough to know for sure.

What I do know for sure, I was aware of the idea long before I started paying close attention and comparing. Once I did, some things like getting speaker cables up off the floor are more obvious than keeping power cords away from each other and ICs. By the time I got to the point where I had heard the improvement well then its like a lot of things once you know its a waste of time to keep comparing comparing comparing it becomes something you just do.

Look at my system, the pictures were taken from different perspectives in part to show how all the cables are kept apart as much as possible. Where they do come close they tend to cross at right angles. There's stuff behind the turntable that holds the phono lead, ground wire, etc so they aren't just dangling over PCs. 

Ultimately this is no different than a lot of other things- borderline insignificant to barely noticeable. Add enough barely noticeable things together however and you one day look back and realize all those little things add up to one very big thing.
A lot of the times, that little noise you were hearing, and were putting up with was a routing issue.  None of the wires touch, if it's a PS it crosses at a right angle, and at least 2 inches from any IC. I have one place where this happens. Everything else can be routed, take your time. It is an art.
Grasshopper... When you can take the pebbles from my hand, you will be ready. LOL

So you know, I use active OXOs, and columns with passive subs, Lots of wire...NO NOISE. ZERO, nadda, nothing... Tube, SS, combos no noise...
Used a hand held AM FM radio to figure the really weird ones. XLR connections arching or bad solder joints, in the wire connections. I had cobwebs drive me nuts inside a passive preamp I made with an onboard LP filter. COBWEBS.. NO Noise. and no Yoko Ono.... same thing noise.

Regards
Do you want shielded power cables or unshielded?

If shielded power cables ultimately eliminate the issue then shielded would be the best for an audiophile, correct?
Then I could bunch them all tougher. 🤷🏻‍♂️
You want power cables that sound good. Shielded or unshielded is irrelevant. Either way they will not sound as good bunched together. Read the post again.