Powercord to tame brightness and add musicality

Nick,
I agree with Ajahu. The Reymo line conditioner is designed to make more elegant, refined, less edgy sound. I have heard it in a friends system. He has used it in and out of his system and has decieded to keep it in, for the problems you stated.

I think that brightness & edginess are 2 separate qualities that are often lumped together when they should not. For example, Wilson speakers are edgy in my experience as an owner, but not bright. Some Aerial speakers (one owned 10ts) can be bright, but are anything but edgy. I once tried some Nordost Valhalla ICs on my Accuphase 75V, & they were so bright & forward they drove me against the wall, but at the same time they were smooth.
Brightness is more tizziness, glare, forwardness, or screech.
Edginess is a kind of etched, brittle, scraping, hash-like, rough sound especially noticible in vocals and piano notes.

While both are bad, edginess is far more annoying to me, because it seems more intrinsically part of each instrument or voice, making each sound artificial. Brightness be sometimes be listened through, like clicks & pops from vinyl.

The opposite of bright is dark, and I have heard a system sound dark while still being edgy.

Just my 2-cents on this subject.

For what it's worth, in trying to avoid edginess, I like Shunyata Anaconda Alphas in the high-price range, TG 688s or SLVRs at the modest-price end.

Nickt,
If it hasn't already been done, I would definitely look into room treatment first. In my system, most of the brightness were gone after a couple of diy projects. The remaining flutter echo was taken care of by some well placed objects along the reflection points.

Hey guy’s,
Ever stop to think that a lot (but not all) of the problem here is the dirty AC?
What do you think Psychicanimal?

Some other thoughts? Can you 'tame the room'? This can make a big difference. I would look to the room...and if you don't want to change gear, I would look at cabling. There is musical cable that has high resolution and there is 'detailed' cable that is analytical imho. Again, system dependent...play away...try a bunch and find the (sacrilege) color you like :).

Also, try some tweaks on your cd's - I have found that a combination of the following has made cd's more 'musical' -
Herbies audio mat and an audio desk and cryo'ing cd's. All the above brought me more resolution, more musicality, not what I would call detail, which can be confused with bright....in some instances.

Be careful with powerconditioners, yes, some work better than others, but my experience as been it is system dependent. One conditioner is NOT everyone's cup of tea. I have found them to be system and equipment dependent. For example on my VAC PHI integrated it comes with a 47 pound outboard powersupply. I plugged several conditioners in with either no to little to no effect to YUCK! depending on the conditioner.