I posted the following on the LessLoss website:
I've been comparing power cords carefully for almost 30 years. I've tried very expensive and well-known brands, relatively inexpensive and more obscure brands, and DIY concoctions from cheap hardware store wire. For the past 8 years or so I'd stuck with various Shunyata Power Snakes, which I still hold in high esteem. They trounced everything else I had tried, and I was especially happy with the King Cobra v2. Despite the claims of Shunyata and some reviewers, I think it was the best power cord Shunyata ever made--at least in my system, which I believe (and others claim) is very neutral.
But like many audiophiles, from time to time I get the itch to try something new. So I bought two very reasonably-priced Original LessLoss DFPCs. To my surprise, despite the price difference (the KCs originally sold for around $2200), the Originals were superior to the KCs. I found them to be even more neutral and more detailed, and somewhat more dynamic. The difference wasn't as striking as I'd heard in some previous cable shoot-outs, but it was clearly audible and a change for the better. And I heard that same difference in various applications: with my VSE-modified Sony SCD-1, powering my PS Audio Power Plant Premier, and also powering a set-up I dedicated to dubbing CDs onto CDRs.
Recently, I learned that LessLoss had improved upon the Original DFPC and produced the Signature. I gladly accepted Louis's upgrade offer and soon thereafter received two new Signature DFPCs. This time, the changes I heard were more dramatic. I compared the Signatures both to the Original DFPCs and to some remaining King Cobra v2s, and there was no doubt that the Signatures were a considerable improvement over both. Compared to the Original DFPC, the Signature produced a bigger, deeper, and more detailed soundstage, and even though the Originals were already very neutral, smooth and extended, the Signatures were (incredibly to me) even more so, with strikingly improved and more realistic reproduction of instrumental timbre. (Perhaps I should mention that I'm a musician [a pianist], and I know what acoustic instruments sound like.) The Signatures had greater low-frequency weight without being bloated or muddy, and I was frequently surprised by the amount of upper-frequency detail I was hearing (or hearing clearly) for the first time. Even the gentle high buzzing sound produced by the Power Plant Premier's CleanWave function emerged with more clarity.
It's not surprising, then, that in a head-to-head comparison with the King Cobra v2, I preferred the Signature by a large margin. As good as the KC was, and as much as I thoroughly enjoyed the sound of my system every time the KCs were installed, replacing them with the Signatures demonstrated, over and over, what an improvement the new cables provided--across the board. The Signatures were significantly more neutral, more balanced, more realistic, and more extended, but never cold or clinical.
In fact, at this point you can probably fill-in the cliches for me; you know what they are when a new component takes one's system to a clearly audible new level of performance and realism. And you probably know the experience of being caught up in the music even when you're trying to listen to the changes wrought by some new component, or hearing unexpected details in recordings you thought you knew well. Those things happened to me as well, time and again.
So make no mistake, the Signature DFPC is a killer power cord, and at its price it's still a bargain. I'm buying more.
