Larry the Cable Guys

Larry the Cable Guy says "Have I got a power cord for you fellows!"

A few things the cable designer said that caught my attention.

Size of the conductor wire gauge matters. Well ya...

How you get there without changing the phase relationship between the voltage and the current. Increase the wire gauge be it solid or stranded increases the inductance in the circuit. That will cause a phase shift between the voltage and the current. Ideally you want the two in phase.

Solution, parallel several smaller gauge individual insulated conductors together. That not only limits induction but adds capacitance which combined helps keep the voltage and current in phase. (It should be said most well know cable manufactures design their cables this same way. Also the majority of them, from what info they give I have noticed, the parallel individual small insulated conductors are solid wire, not stranded.

Essential sound Products uses four 20 gauge insulated conductors for the Hot and four for the neutral conductor. Equivalent wire gauge is 14awg. 20 gauge is pretty small. Just going from memory the smallest Audioquest uses is 18 gauge solid wire. Though I am not current what any manufacturers use today. Going from memory some uses different gauge insulated wires in their mix of parallel conductors to get their desired wire gauge.

Another thing the cable designer talked about was shielding. How he approaches the use of the shield spacing it from the Hot and neutral current carrying conductors is similar to other cable manufacturers.

It should be noted he did not mention the secrete ingredients used in his cable. The proprietary stuff.

This is where the professionals need to step in and give their interpretations of the measurements.

The Tests

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@jea48 

Thanks for the link.  Very simple presentation and should be read by those considering, or rejecting power cord upgrades.  I hope that @jasonbourne71 has a chance to review the information.  His resistance to mindless upgrades has always been a valuable contribution.  Not that I have always agreed with his position.

Just one observation.  Thicker wire has lower inductance.  The reason for splinting wire into separate strands is skin effect.   For copper skin depth at 20kHz is about 0.5mm *  That would suggest keeping wires thinner that gauge 18.   In plain stranded wire current would jump from strand to strand (path of lower resistance - to outside) jumping thru impurities (oxides) that are on the strand's surface.  Insulating wires eliminates that, but skin effect still exist (increasing overall impedance) since strands are still in each other's magnetic field.  That is why there are strange designs, like flat cables or wires woven in helical twist on large hollow tubes, like in my acoustic Zen Satori.  Twisting and interleaving multiple hot and returns reduces inductance,   I'm not sure if skin effect is audible since most speakers are inductive at high frequencies (higher impedance), but for some speakers like electrostats (capacitive at high frequencies) it can make audible difference.

* It means that in 2mm diameter wire (gauge 12) most of electric charge at 20kHz will not flow thru inner 1mm diameter.  Skin depth is the depth where current density drops to about 1/3.  Gauge 18 wire has 1mm diameter.