@hilde45 yes I did - digital and ethernet cables make a difference but they don’t have the same impact as other cables. Think about it…your amp is the last link in the chain before your speakers. Interconnects between your preamp and amp will impact the sound much more than anything upstream including digital and ethernet. Now you need to remove your next bottleneck - speaker cables. And feed the amp good power.
Now here’s the caveat though…by doing the above you’ll expose other weaknesses upstream starting with your source to preamp cables. Your digital cables aren’t in the picture yet. And if you have a power conditioner for your sources, the power cord feeding it will be next on the list. Then the power cords for sources, then the digital links at the very end.
Just my thoughts based on my experience. And…it depends on many factors that can change the approach so YMMV as we love to say here.
Cable differences -- power, interconnect, digital, and in what order?
A friend of mine has been a real connoisseur of interconnects and speaker cables; he hears very subtle differences between them, mixes and matches them with different results, and experiments with upgrades (and reselling!).
One thing he's never done much with is power cords or power conditioners.
This raised a question for me -- to what degree have people found differences in source and interconnect cables vs. power cables? Are they all important to an equal degree for you? Where is the greatest impact for you?
And if you do find power cables to be an important factor, where have you started making changes in your system? Wall to amp? With source?
Thanks for any thoughts.
- ...
- 25 posts total
For me it was not until the majority of my system was up to par THEN I started hearing real differences between different levels of quality interconnect and speaker cables. My ranking is closer to @audphile1, but swapping 3 & 4. |
@audphile1 Thanks for the further detail. And I suppose it goes without saying that unless one has tried a very good cable for any of the above, one cannot really know what they're missing. |
@hilde45 correct. And to add to the power cord conversation…not all power cords work equally well on all components. The only exception I found so far is the Audience AU24se power cable that worked very well on all 3 DACs that I had over the last 1-2 years. It wasn’t great on amplifiers or preamps. I’ve also had power cords that worked great on one amp and not as well on other amps. It’s all about trying and finding what works best. |
audiphile1, If you had to pick using a higher end 1.5M power cord (from a very established cable manufacturer), for use between a solid state DAC with internal transformer -vs-. a tube preamplifier with an external transformer - what would be your preference, and why - if you care to share more?. Notes: Both components are plugged into a Richard Gray Power Station right now. Nice dark background, as-is. If it matters, I do use the preamp for other inputs however, most serious listening is for components through the dac itself. |
- 25 posts total