Cable Influences: IC SpeakerCables Power Cord?

Tok20000

Good perspective. If I want to start with a good power cord for my source, do you have any recommendations? Say, $150 range? Per your logic, I'm sure Glai would be interested too.

Steve

KF- I couldn't have said it better myself!

BTW nice to see a few posts from you in the last few days :^)

Good post KF. I would agree with that and also add that effective vibration control will let you hear things that you will not even with the most expensive cables. I am playing with the Ceraball isolation devices and the improvement is the type where you say "after hearing it this clear I could never go back to the old sound". The Ceraballs even work well under my speakers. Some people tried the Aurios under speakers but that sure seemed unstable to me. Give them a try, music direct has them for $100 30 day home trial. I also plan to try SRA and Neuance shelves to see how much of an improvement they provide.

After toying with over 100 cables in the past few years, I'm done with cabling.
Think of it this way: from source to preamp to amp to speakers
your signal gets amplify to a greater degree prior to amp. Therefore, any small flaw will show up 1000 times greater when it pass through the amp.
Based on the above, you then ask yourself if IC is more critical or speaker wires?
As far as power cord goes, clean power and larger bandwidth is always more desireable. Too much filtering might also trim off some signals and reduces speed.

The "bigger" difference is all depends on how well your component match with each other.

i.e. If you have a $50 apex dvd player as your source then a $5000 IC will not do the magic.
or If you have a $10000 cd player with $300 integrated amp, the $10000 cabling will not do much good either.

There is no definite answer of what will make a bigger difference.

S234chang is dead on right about component matching.

If your components do not match, no matter what cables you use, you are not going to get good performance from a poorly matched system.

Because I am in the industry, I do not make specific product recommendations in open public forums.

My best advice is try before you buy (AC cords or anything else for that matter). Do as much research as you can. Money does not always translate into sonics. However, this does not mean the best sonics can be obtained with a $50 AC cord. The cheapest reference level AC cord I have found runs around about $600 retail. And frankly, I think that it performs generally as good or better than anything I have tried at any price point.

$600 may sound like a lot for an AC cord, but some companies are trying to get upwards of $2k-3k retail for their cords. Tireguy knows what I am talking about.

There are AC cords under $600 retail that are good. I have not tried them all. There could be one out there that is reference level. I have looked hard, but have yet to find it.

KF