MY Sidewinder AC cord progress:

Carl you've been busy, we need a scorecard to keep track of all the combinations, but very good post. As you know I have Powersnakes Sidewinder on my Musical Fidelity X-Ray CD player and was very pleased with improved sound. It is interesting how a AC cord can have different results depending what piece of equipment it is used for. For those who are interested, to give some perspective, here are some retail prices for cables Carl is testing, Powersnakes Sidewinder 5ft $280 & black mamba 6ft $695, MIT Z-cord 2 6ft $175, ESP essence 6ft $499, Synergistic ref 5ft $600, Purist Audio proteus 5ft $560, Tiffany ???? After a while it becomes too mind boggling between changing AC cords, interconnects, and speaker cables..... so many combinations

Thank you, Megasam.

The Tiffany Carl is speaking of is the TPC-60, long discontinued, but can sometime be found used at about $60.00 to $75.00. The Tiffany sold for a retail price of $179.00 when new. Although not the best AC cord available, it is nearly impossible to beat when considering purchase price. I keep several around for testing at my place, and I have mostly Purist Dominus everywhere in the system.

Tonight I got bogged down with just the Cardas speaker cable in the system, so I can't make an accurate observation on how the current combo (Black Mamba on CD player, Proteus on amp) actually compared with the Sidewinder-Proteus combo, but hope to do that tomorrow. The sound was the best in many ways that I've heard the Cardas (Neutral Reference), and that's why I listened longer than I should have (2.5 hours, too long for the volume level I chose; sometimes I have no will power)....and then I ran out of time, like I always do. My take is that there are three things inevitable in life: death, taxes, and running out of time (when everything is just starting to get good!).

And thank you for the clarification, Albert.