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The last 6 feet - is it important?

The question I've see many times on several forums is....

When you have 50 ft of Romex from the breaker panel to the outlet, why is the last 6ft of power cable important?

So I started looking at how some of the better performing power cables are constructed and one thing stood out - many of them had lots of individually insulated wires for each conductor.

When you construct something in that manner it normally increases the capacitance.

We know excessive capacitance is not the best thing to have in an Interconnect and in some cases in speaker cables because of the "stored energy"

But if a power cable could "store energy" then it would improve it's ability to satisfy transient demands.

So knowing Kimber cable uses multi strand conductors for their speaker cables resulting in a higher capacitance than many other brands - I decided to build a power cable out of Kimber 4PR.

The 4PR was used for the live and neutral conductors (approximately 10 gauge) and a plain old piece of multi strand copper wire was used for ground.

Each conductor had shrink sleeve added to compress the strands and add extra insulation and finished off with nylon cable sleeve. I braided the conductors to aid with RF rejection. Total cost with connectors $100 for a 5ft cable

I installed the cable on my DAC which had a Furutech FP-3TS762 20 amp 10 gauge cable with silver plated copper connectors.

It took about 5 minutes to appreciate the improvement - even before being burned in...
- vast improvement in image - deeper and wider
- much improved clarity
- much improved details
- much improved dynamics

Now I don't know for sure whether it's "Stored Energy" due to capacitance that's making the difference here. But the quality of the copper in both cables is very similar, the gauge is practically identical and the quality of the connectors are also very similar.

All I know is what I am hearing is much nicer than with the Furutech cable.

Now before you start slamming the Furutech cable - the DAC is plugged into a DIY power distribution box and the cable connecting that to the outlet is the very same Furutech 10 gauge cable.

Now I've see some manufacturer of power cables mention that they recommend a minimum of 5-6ft of cable be used for best results - increasing the length would increase the cable's capacitance, improving it's ability to store energy and provide better performance. Or is it just to get you to spend more

SO - does anyone else have an alternate theory as to why the last six feet is important?

Would like to hear an explanation :-)
williewonka
williewonka OP
3,075 posts
 
Bifwynne - it's the quality of the copper used in the TC range - "hyper pure copper"- it probably has higher IACS conductivity rating, but they don't publish that.

I've found that all cables with higher quality copper - or better still silver -have better dynamics and bass response - but you then need quality connectors like Furez otherwise the improvements are reduced significantly

Hope that makes sense

Regards
bifwynne
2,206 posts
 
Wille ... what is IACS conductivity? Sorry if that's a dumb question.
williewonka OP
3,075 posts
 
Bif - no such thing as a dumb question.

International Annealed Copper Standard:
It’s a measure of the conductivity of various metals relative to “Pure Copper” having a rating of 100%, a standard developed for copper wire producers.

For Complete Definition See:
IACC Definition

For values of different metals/alloys see:
IACC Table

What I have discovered over the last little while is that conductors (i.e. wires and connectors) with higher IACS rating tend to be more dynamic in their presentation.

The TC line of Kimber cables allow for noticeably faster dynamics with more detail.

However - if high value conductors, like the 4TC, is used with with lower valued Brass Bananas or spades you are definitely not getting the most out of the cables.

If you think about it - the electrons flying down the high purity copper highway and hitting a brass toll booth :-)

I have Silver interconnect cables rated round 106% with copper alloy RCA's rated around 80%. They sounded pretty nice and quite detailed, but not what I would call smoooooth.

Upgrading the RCA's to a solid silver RCA made a very big difference and improved clarity and dynamics with a definite mellowing of the high frequencies - without loosing details.

I also applied a similar upgrade to my speaker cables, which were already silver coated high purity copper. Adding silver coated high conductive copper FUREZ Bananas improved overall clarity and dynamics.

Hope this clarifies things :-)

Post removed 
bifwynne
2,206 posts
 
Very interesting Willie. Thanks.

Notably, the IACS rating of alloys, even copper alloys, "goes south" pretty quickly. But the various grades of "pure" copper were still very high.

I buy your point that interposing an alloy interconnector, or as some have also said, speaker terminal jumpers, can affect sonics. Especially after having looked at the IACS chart.

Still not drinking the Kool-Aid on the various grades of speaker cabling made of pure, versus hyper, versus ultra pure copper. But I may have a different view after trying out the better grades. If so, I'll be back.

Thanks again.
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