I asked this same question to the fellow who designed Audioquest's terrific Niagara line of power conditions. He replied with an unequivocal 'yes', although he hastened to add that the conditioner's cable was only one of many that affected the sound; every upgraded power cable provides an iterative improvement and merely omitting one does not negate the benefits provided by the rest of the conditioner/cable plant.
A not sarcastic question for the power conditioner/upgraded power cord folks
And I realize that there are those that don’t believe in either
Assuming you use a power conditioner and after market power cords, do you feel that the power cord from the power conditioner to the wall might be a limiting or even a negating factor to the performance of the after market power cords that run from the power conditioner to the gear?
The reason I ask is that I was about to embark upon some more experimentation with different power cords and where I plugged them into when I discovered that the aftermarket cords I had purchased before and some recent arrivals are actually a meter shorter than the ones that came with the gear. This doesn’t matter for the amp due to its location, but when I did my last power cord upgrade I ran my CDP and pre into a conditioner so the length for those didn’t matter either, but as I was doing the musical chairs with power cords thing today, I also was intending to run the CDP and pre straight into the wall on separate dedicated circuits, but I found out that I am a tad short on those two.
Which doesn’t preclude me from moving my dedicated circuit outlets up a couple of feet, and I suppose I probably will, but I was curious as to the opinions about the limitations of a power conditioners power cord.
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@squared80 , if you don't think that they work because you cannot hear the difference don't waste your time and money by using them; but there's also probably no point in wasting your time on threads related to the subject. |
@immatthewj Yes that’s what it would mean. Good luck wrestling 6awg and 10awg cables into a standard JB though. I also can’t immediately think of connectors appropriate for that job. Using a subpanel is the sensible thing to do here. Subpanels are designed to accommodate large gauge wiring in the first place, so it would be far less labor and pain than mickey mousing a junction box together. It will cost, I don’t know, $70 or $80 extra. The alternative is to run multiple 10awg circuits. That's probably the route I will favor when I get around to doing this job in my house. I know the insulation material you’re talking about. Wear a respirator, not a covid mask. |
@devinplombier , I just wanted to clarify that what the author was suggesting was beyond cutting out holes for duplexes and fishing romex down through them. I have no intention of "stepping down" 6 or 8 awg to 10. As it is, every dedicated circuit (six so far) I have installed I did with 12-2. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the internet when I dived into the first project, and during subsequent expeditions I guess I wasn’t convinced that 12-2 wouldn't/couldn’t carry the current satisfactorily and I kind of got the impression from electricians I talked to (not on the internet) that 10 gauge is difficult to work with. I am still not convinced that gear plugged into 10 gauge will sound better, but maybe I am just in denial, and I may go back up in the attic and swap out three of the runs I did with 12 and use 10. Just in case. For the time being, I guess my first goal is to get my new 2m power cords plugged straight into the wall with nothing in between, and that is relatively simple and wouldn’t even require a trip back up to the attic. Unless I wanted to space those three runs out some more where they go down the wall, and I guess I probably would. I appreciate the respiratory advice related to working in the attic. I’ve gone from full blown respirators to dust masks to this last expedition--nothing. You probably understand what it’s like to work up there, crouched/kneeling/whatever on a plank that is sitting on a couple of ceiling joists or rafters or whatever one may call them, and all the other discomforts of working in an unfinished attic . . . the older I get the harder it gets and the easier and quicker I start cramping up when contorting my body to work in the places I need to work up there.
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@immatthewj I totally empathize. If it can make you feel any better, mine will entail spending a day in a spider-infested crawlspace with 18" clearance under the beams. Honestly, before you go to too much trouble you might want to assess the worst load you’re ever likely to plug into your existing 12awg circuits, before you declare them inadequate. In my most humble opinion, unless you’re planning to biamp Apogee Scintillas with a quatuor of Krell KMA-800s you’re probably fine 🙂 |
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