Power cords or power conditioner

ozzy62

2,458 posts

09-05-2022 at 07:17am 

 

 

 

 

secretguy

1,023 posts

09-04-2022 at 09:49pm 

I have yet to hear a power cord make a difference.

 

My money is on “you’ve never even tried”…..

You would be wrong. Doubtless, not the first time.

@secretguy I believe you, and I think you’ve formulated your statement in the best way possible when you stated

I have yet to hear a power cord make a difference

I don’t doubt that at all and I think that’s totally cool. Many reasons why that could be.
However, it doesn’t mean others don’t hear a difference or shouldn’t try to explore what potential changes different power cords have to offer. But this isn’t what this thread is about anyways so we’ll stay on topic.

I know everybody is different but to this day best improvement I’ve experienced was adding a power conditioner. I added a Pass Seymour outlet and was a little taken back with what I heard so decided to try a Running Springs Hayley almost 20 years ago.

Noise floor went black from what it was. Every musician in the sound stage had there own space/air around them. I had never heard anything like that, with every move up the Running Springs line was an improvement. 

Maybe everyone’s system reacts different but I have always used a passive conditioner since the day I put the Running Springs in my system. Power cables are also as important in my room. They all have there own flavor which makes things fun. Don’t even get me talking about high end outlets.

I agree with most here that speaker placement and room treatments is the place to start. You need to get that right first.  The biggest thing that made an impact to soundstage depth for me is having the speakers towed out, so that they are almost firing straight ahead.  But that applies to my B&W 802’s, it might be different for you.  Definitely suggest playing with toeing out your speakers though, in addition to the other suggestions regarding speaker placement.

After that, for sure, I find power cables (and other cabling) and conditioners all play into the degree of soundstage depth as well.   However I found that the few conditioners I tried altered the tonal balance adversely.  I found that the Torus RM20 (which is not a conditioner but rather a big honking isolation transformer that weighs 90 pounds - super simple and super effective) was far more even handed and has more instantaneous current supply than your amp could ever want.  Torus told me that moving up to the more expensive AVR20 is pointless provided your AC supply stays within 4V of 120VAC.  They suggested I purchase a Kill-A-Watt meter from Amazon, which I did, and I found my voltage to be fine.  So I stuck with the RM20.  

After testing my amp (Gryphon Diablo 300 integrated) connected to the Torus and to the wall, I found it was actually best through the Torus.  This was NOT the case with the Audioquest Niagara 5000 I demoed where my amp sounded unquestionably better connected directly to the wall.

One clarification - when I mentioned that the Torus is not a conditioner, I meant not in the traditional sense. Rather than filtering noise out, it electrically isolates your system from your house’s AC.

Interestingly, it was Nordost who first turned me on to Torus, when I had some questions about my Valhalla 2 speaker cables. They told me they thought conditioners can be tricky and unpredictable and yes, they also mentioned they can have an effect on tonal balance. They then suggested I look into Torus, along with another industry-veteran contact of mine who also strongly suggested Torus.

The RM20 definitely helps with soundstage depth. Details become more coherent, and I find that mid and upper detail are prerequisites for soundstage depth. Or maybe they just happen to always go together, not sure. But as mentioned speaker position and room treatment first…

And, dare I say it given the controversy in my other thread regarding power cord length: I think @ghdprentice found that when comparing like power cords of differing lengths, the longer cord offered a deeper soundstage? His test was with Audioquest Hurricanes.  And while I think of it - in my experience if you are using a USB cord shorter than 1.5m that will also clobber your soundstage depth somewhat and will compress everything more.  I did this test with two Audioquest  Diamond USB cords and two Nordost Valhalla 2 USB cords.  The longer cords from both manufacturers were blatantly better than the shorter cords in terms of openness, detail and soundstage depth.  I thought it might be a burn in issue at first so I actually ran the cords hundreds of hours, with no change - longer cords were superior.  So you might want to ensure you have no ultra short USB cables.