What are 6 feet going to do for me?

Audioengr, you say that "like all cables in audio, shorter is always better." I speak with no engineering authority, but I want to suggest that this may not be true with power cords.

If shorter were better, than no cord at all would be best. Why not just continue the Romex out from the wall and hardwire it into the component? (Has anyone tried this?) This would be the equivalent of no power cord since the PC's function is simply to handle that last six feet anyway.

I think our collective experience would predict that hardwiring in this way would not be better, at least not better that what some of the great PCs do for our systems. This is because these cords are not merely supplying the last six feet but are also doing *something* to the power--filtering or whatever--to improve what gets to our components. If this is the case, it could be reasonable to conclude that longer might in fact be better because it will provide more of that whatever-it-is it's doing.

As someone once put it to me: If you like what your power cord does to the sound of your system, why wouldn't you want more of that?

Warren,

From my experience I'd say that this is all incrimental. I'm using a Stealth too and yes things do get better again when you upgrade the cable that is feeding it. I would not say that the improvement is as dramatic as when I first installed my Stealth, but it's there. The question is how much money do you want to spend. It seems that there is no end to this power stuff. Don't go crazy with spending tons of money. I upgrade and play with things a little at a time when my cash flow permits.

Drubin wrote:

If shorter were better, than no cord at all would be best. Why not just continue the Romex out from the wall and hardwire it into the component? (Has anyone tried this?) This would be the equivalent of no power cord since the PC's function is simply to handle that last six feet anyway.

I'm afraid that it is not equivalent. That last six feet of power cord can have 1/5 to 1/10 the inductance of the ROMEX in the wall. Therefore, if you run 36 feet of ROMEX directly to the component, and you compare this to 30 feet of ROMEX and a 6-foot low-inductance cord, then this is like 30 feet of ROMEX compared to 36 feet of ROMEX. The full-ROMEX solution will have higher inductance. Shorter is better. you can read more about inductance and its effect on a power feed on my website: http://www.empiricalaudio.com

This is because these cords are not merely supplying the last six feet but are also doing *something* to the power--filtering or whatever--to improve what gets to our components. If this is the case, it could be reasonable to conclude that longer might in fact be better because it will provide more of that whatever-it-is it's doing.

No, longer is still not better. There are two scientifically verifiable effects that power cords can have:
1) lowering inductance of the entire power feed
2) filtering the ground noise

The second one has to do with ground-loops. IF your system is completely wired using balanced IC's, then this is a "dont-care". However, most systems are single-ended, and therefore prone to noise from ground-loops. Filtering on the ground lead of a power-cord can reduce or eliminate some of this noise, particularly at high-frequencies. The other thing to understand is that this ground-loop noise is not continuous. It is sometimes related to the signals in the wires itself, causing crosstalk between left and right channels for instance. This is because the ground-loop noise is realted to the voltage drops in the ground-return paths of the interconnects. Single-ended systems are a knarley problem at best...

I don't know what magic that power cable can do but for $6000, you can get a state of the art turntable, tone arm, and cartridge. And I can guarantee that you will get much more enjoyment from that then from any $6000 power cable.

Sidssp - I'm with you on this one .... and I'm a complete convert to CD's..