Still mystified by mega expensive power cords

THanks for the link to the Audio Critic.
I was a subscriber since day one as I was with TAS and Stereophile.
I missed the OLD AudioCritic, before Peter came back and started on his revenge/vendetta against the High End.

He felt ostracized I guess,his Fourier speaker failed to impress any of the high end reviewers, he lost money, subscribers like me lost most of our subscriptions,and I think the Audio community lost a once well regarded reviewer,as opinionated as he was ,especially in later years, I will always be indedbted to Peter for bringing my attention to the awful sound degradation fuses have on amplifiers and wherever they are used in audio.

For years I substituted the speaker protection fuses with solid chunks of copper or bits of old speaker wire,and in every instance the sound was more focused and pure,and I never had any disasters.
When the upgraded fuses came out I bought IsoCleans, HiFi Supremes and AMRs, all worked better than the stock fuse,and still provided protection that my wire DIY fuses never did.

Not to try and hijack the thread, but I believe if it wasn't for Peter Aczel, the whole aftermarket fuse trend would perhaps have never happened.

Ironic isn't it?

The thing about mega expensive power cords is that no one says that the most expensive power cord means it's the best.

It's too bad some folks view aftermarket anything as snake oil, and avoid such items,especially if the price is a few times more money than stock.

There are lots of vendors who offer cash back trials,so there's only the risk that you will hear the benefit and then buy the product.

Perhaps that's what scares some folks away.
They want to stay in the safe zone that keeps them away from such discoveries.

Yes,Peter as you said, ignorance is bliss.
It comes in all stripes and colours.

Reading these responses really covers a variety of issues. And the previous guitar amplifier comparison was a great explanation - thanks Lacee!

I'd like to explain why power cords are important. I’ll be using a minimum of technical terms and I’d like to over simplify things – so we can identify what is really important. Please realize I’ll explain things without being too detailed – using simple assumptions to make getting to our conclusion easier. So please don’t reply and invalidate something said – I’ll ask everyone to follow along to the end.

For the record, I have an engineering degree – but I will humbly state there are MANY individuals who know SIGNIFICANTLY more than I do.

Here goes;

Power stations generate electricity and distributed it through miles of power lines, switching stations and transformers. These power lines, switching stations and transformers are called the power grid. Relatively to our audiophile use, electricity traveling through the power grid gets SEVERLY contaminated. In this instance, contaminated means the electricity is no longer pure, but has many other parts or components in it that cause problems.

Many things using electricity can crudely filter out some of the contamination and / or operate without removing the contamination without a problem. Simple on / off electrical motors (like attic fan motors) are a great example, and operate fine using contaminated or “dirty” power.

Oversimplified, electronic equipment is more sensitive to contamination and requires more filtering – and digital electrical equipment is the most sensitive and requires the most filtering.

How does the electrical power become contaminated?

The electrical power grid’s power lines act like antennas and experience Radio Frequency (RF) and Electro Magnetic Induction Interference (EMI) and these are two things that contaminate the electricity. This contamination becomes significant over the many miles of a power grid. This contamination also occurs in our house.

Electricity also becomes contaminated from electrical devices within the house. Light dimmers are a good example – a light dimmer being used in a house can contaminate the electricity within the house. The same goes for the neighbors in your community, especially commercial and sometimes industrial neighbors.

So, now that we’ve explained how we have contaminated power at the plug we use for our stereo – how do we fix the problem? Power conditioners and / or power cords.

Power conditioners seem obvious but designing and building one to perform well is tricky – very tricky! The same can be said for power cords.

First, we’ll need to understand a few things about electricity to understand how and why power cords will or won’t work well. To keep things simpler, we won’t consider the metallurgy, configuration and insulation of wire and plug.

The job of the power cord is to deliver power. In theory, a perfect power cord will eliminate all the contamination and the worst possible power cord will add more contamination to the electricity it delivers.

A perfect power cord will use wire and plugs that are designed and constructed to eliminate contamination (in our example Radio Frequency and Electro Magnetic Induction contamination and contamination from within one’s own house). Doing so isn’t impossible – it just requires applying proven scientific principals and being able to identify and measure the specific parameters that are critical to eliminating the contamination so pure electricity can be fed to our audiophile equipment. It also requires repeated iterations and testing of a design until the desired performance is obtained. The finished power cord product allows electronic equipment (especially digital electronic equipment) to operate at peak performance.

Many people consider the ability of the wire to deliver a larger amount of current, which leads to the “bigger is better” mantra or “size does matter” view, but this is only one role of the power cord. Providing LOTS of contaminated power isn’t what we want. Providing reasonably more pure power than necessary is what we desire, and is exactly what a quality power cord is designed to do.

Creating a good performing power cord is reasonably easy. As we strive to improve performance further, more issues become critical – and executing each successive stage becomes more difficult, complex and expensive. Periodically, technology makes leap advancements, sometimes cost effectively – which result in a significant performance improvement becoming available to more people.

Similar to other commodities, our audiophile industry has a point where spending more yields significantly better performance. Continuing to ascend the performance ladder, becoming more difficult, complex and expensive – yields further incremental gains. The law of diminishing returns applies and there’s usually a price / performance point that provides exceptional performance at an “acceptable” expense. At the pinnacle of performance, subtle gains may be extremely expensive yet make the dramatic difference in the illusion (of a real performance) we strive to create.

Technically, how does a power cord provide pure power? Explaining the many parts of a well designed and constructed power cord requires a good technical understanding of electricity, metallurgy, dielectrics, electro-magnetics and physics. Power cord design and construction become critical for premium performance – which are topics for other discussions.

So when someone asks why power cords sound different, you now have a conceptual understanding of why – and can realize it’s not “snake oil.” I hope I’ve allowed everyone to realize why power cords make a difference.

Music is a profound part of my life, and I’ve been involved in our audiophile industry for more than 20 years, and I’m involved in it solely for the love of music. I will be creating a website addressing these and other issues and will invite anyone interested to visit once it’s operational.

Kindest regards, Thomas Foti.

Wow im mystified as well but love my STEALTH V12.

I tend to view a power cords role of delivering power as separate from filtering or purifying the power. Not to say a power cord might not do both, kind of like how an integrated amplifier serves dual roles in one package.

Lots of ways to skin a cat.

In some cases, the cat may not really need to be skinned in the first place as well, but sometimes hard to tell, in which case a true audiophile will erron the side of caution I suppose. :-)

@ Tjassoc, Hi, If no body else will say it, I will, I enjoyed your post, I have talked to, and read many engineers post, you kept your words simple when all the other engineers that talk on the threads do not, Bravo!, I will also add, most engineers do not believe high performance cables make a difference, you do, another bravo!, I am interested in anything you have to say, LOL!, I can understand you!, Happy Holidays.