Power cord upgrade

mclinnguy,

And I'll keep writing how much better OCC single crystal is than OFC obviously you haven't done much research Let me educate you OFC wire has minimum 500 crystal barriers per foot that's little fractures in the wire that the signal has to jump across which causes all kinds of bad things like coldness hardness brightness edginess any one of those things or all of those things and when a company like transparent has the audacity to charge $70,000 for the cheapest crappy wire on the market that pisses me off, I don't like seeing people get ripped off by scam companies like that, OCC single crystal wire has been proven to be the best wire for audio for about 60 years now and the rectangular OCC single crystal wire is even better than the round OCC single crystal wire, but if some people like to get ripped off that's totally up to them I guess, and I even phoned Transparent and asked them why they're not using single crystal instead of cheap OFC wire and you know what the answer was to me which was full of crap? we tested all kinds of wire and we found OFC the best, well it's the cheapest so they can make more profit and just so you know your prices are way off 14 gauge Teflon coated stranded OCC is$9.50 a foot in Canada right now not much less than the US so it is definitely not cheap, but I've done the comparison myself I rewired my monitor audio gold G4 speakers with single crystal and I got a 15 to 20% improvement right across the board and now that I have the platinum 200 ll I'll be doing the same thing and replacing the silver plated OFC that's in there right now.

mclinnguy,

There's no such purity as 7N copper, the best purity for OCC single crystal copper is 6N, I think you're getting confused with the OCC silver that's 7N.

@devinplombier 

That's 500A, which should cover pretty much any audio-related use case many times over.

Does it though? I found it surprising also, it is a 20 amp circuit and he is pulling 1000 amps out of it. Apparently audio is not a hair dryer or a toaster- it is not about continuous rather instantaneous current delivery, or in Shunyata's slogan DTCD. But this is perhaps why when one connects an excellent audio cable one often hears more loudness and better dynamics. 

@zuesman I see.  I know all about OCC, I used to use Audio Sensibility products and am aware of the personal relationship Steve Huang has with Dr. Ohno. If there is someone who actually has the real OCC stuff I would wager on him. They are great products for the money, but I now get better sound using other products. Go figure.

Well, folks, it gets better.

The unit used in the Shunyata video is an Ideal SureTest circuit analyzer model 161-64. I’m remotely familiar with this unit, which in my world is used by building inspectors to detect bootleg grounds that go undetected by regular circuit testers. It is strictly a power line testing tool that has nothing to do with audio.

In the video Caelin uses the ASCC setting of the 161-64, purportedly to demonstrate the current-carrying superiority of his power cable over a random PC power cord, something that should not necessitate professional testing equipment but I digress.

Here is a quote from the 161-64 manual:

ASCC Measurement The SureTest calculates the Available Short-Circuit Current (ASCC) that the branch circuit can deliver through the breaker during a bolted fault (dead-short) condition. The ASCC is calculated by dividing the line voltage by the circuit’s line impedance (hot + neutral). Depressing the side arrow ( ) displays the worst-case scenario where all three conductors (hot, neutral, ground) are shorted together -- the neutral and ground provide a lower impedance via a parallel return path. Note that this second test will trip a GFCI. See the following equations for clarification. ASCC1 = Line Voltage (VHN)/ (Hot Ω + Neu Ω) ASCC2 = Line Voltage (VHN)/ (Hot Ω + 1/(1/Neu Ω+ 1/ Grd Ω)

Again: "the current that the branch circuit can deliver through the breaker during a bolted fault (dead-short) condition".

In other words, the video experiment tells us that a random PC power cord would fail at 500A in a dead short-circuit situation vs the Shunyata cord’s 1000A or so.

This is without a doubt absolutely true, but here is how Shunyata spins it in its literature:

DTCD (Dynamic Transient Current Delivery) analyzer

DTCD is a method of current analysis that measures instantaneous current delivery in the context of a pulsed current draw. in layman’s terms, it is a way of measuring current performance into typical electronic component power supplies.

Sure! If you happen to weld your hot, neutral and ground wires together, as one does 😂🤣

And then this:

DTCD Current measurement: This measurement depicts the difference in available impulse current between Shunyata’s Venom-3 power cord ($99 retail) and a standard black component power cord. Note the enormous difference in the quantity of current available compared to the stock power cord. The stock power cord delivers only 47% of available current compared to 84% with a Venom-3 power cord. By any standard of measure, this is statistically significant.

It is certainly not significant to a component’s sound quality, if nothing else because it describes an event that has a near-zero chance of happening in a listener’s lifetime (a dead short) and if it did, that component’s sound quality would be the least of its owner’s worries.

I hate to say this and bring more grist to critics’ mill, but it’s probably safe to say that in this particular video at least Caelin shows little respect for his viewers’ / customers’ intelligence.

Here is the 161-64 product page in case yall care to take a delve.