Power Cord Advice

Carl and Albert: It´s a very good sign for me to see you guys coming with a "balancing" comment here. Albert very good point there are other alternatives with shielded cable (stranded though) that could be used from Belden for the power cord.... It all depends on where in the stairway of improvements you are now... As metioned for me almost for sure will get improvements on stock cords but I'm taking my time considering the options in order to do it the best I can. My in-wall wiring is stranded 12ga. and for the amp I'm going to go to at least 10 (still stranded though. I'm looking for solid wire sources at this point). Carl : I agree on the need of PLC for front end in spite of wire age or type in general. You´re confirming my impression that MIT is 14x3 gauge. In my opinion changing the plug in it made an improvement that I personally like, as we all know from many threads it´s a matter of try and decide I´ve compared the Hubbell wall plates vs Eagle or Leviton they are very similar though I consider the construction and finish quality slightly better in Hubbell's (talking hospital grades here) As you point in the last lines of your comment, definitely safety is a first priority. Have you experienced any of the directionality issues mentioned about in-wall wiring mentioned elsewhere. Regards

Carl, what other power cords have you tried out of interest? I am curious as to whether you have tried any of the Powersnakes. I have heard a lot about them but have been unable to hear any myself yet.

To Sol (the name of our sun, but I guess you know that): No, I haven't experienced directionality issues with regards to in-wall wiring, but I haven't experimented with it, either. I don't foresee changing the house wiring in the house I'm in now, but plan to make you all envious with what I'll do in my "dream house" one day. One thing I would do is use several parallel runs of large gauge wire for each circuit, and perhaps anywhere from 20 to 40 amp dedicated circuits (among other things)...........To Nhorton: You must have missed my epic saga called "My Sidewinder AC cord Progress". Seek it out, it's under either "Sound Advice", or "System Matching", I forget which. As others have done, you can even highlight, copy, and paste anything relevant you might find, in another thread, like this one for example.

Mr. Eberhart. Build your house before you are 40 years old or nobody will trust what you say you think you hear . There is always the possibility , as far as nano-decible measurements go , that the human variable is said to be never absent in gathering this data . GODSPEED on your home .

Dear All: I am doing an engineering study of my own right now on this very hot issue, Powercords. Like all self projects it started with almost $0 funding. What I've done so far would interest DIY folks very much. There are 3 important features(IMHO)of PC which I first investigated a) Conductor size.. b)Stranding..c)Insulation material. Shielding & twisting maybe later. I prepared several 1.5m lengths of copper fine stranded,PVC insulated, shielded powercables of various sizes..(18, 16, 14 AWG)for listening comparison against my stockcords(20 AWG) in turn. Contrary to some Audiogon postings, I noticed the greatest difference at the poweramp...please don't jump at me yet. The differences at the preamp and CDP are not noticeable. I tried to understand why was that, so on opening up the CDP, I saw it has some very good powerline filter circuits already builtin. Apparently the various conductor sizes did not improve on this already good filter, furthermore CDP do not demand large instanteneous AC current, so conductor size is not at issue...(Thats not all, more on CDP later when my study proceeds to insulation materials...) Back to the poweramp.. as the conductor size increases, the bass tone became more well defined and lower! It had a sort of "smoothness" and the treble's not affected in any way. That was exciting, but my 15A IEC could not take larger than 14 AWG. It's just slightly smaller than my wallsocket 20A wire. IMHO the better poweramp performance is indicative of quicker mainspower replenishing current rate at 50Hz/60Hz so having voltage stabilizing effect in its DC rectifiers and Storage capacitors. This is logical because the bass is clearly enhanced with larger conductors. I better comeup with some calculation to be tenable for AES to even consider. So for this moment I have 14AWG powercables for the poweramp and preamp, stockcord for CDP(to be further studied and post here when completed). Following is my DIY material list..Cable from local Belden shop marked as CSA LL7874 14-3 SJT 60C FT2 Shielded /14-3 SJT 60C (UL)E3462. (CSA/UL are Canada & USA standards respectively)..IEC 15A freesockets are from Farnell Components. Good luck.