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the magic of power cords

We need a bit of magic in our lives. It might be the reason why audiophilia has such traction among people from all walks of life.

The neophyte's skepticism is likely proportional to the level of technical training - the more you think you know, the stronger the conviction that, for example, the power cable business is a sham: "electrons are electrons" and "if the house cabling is bad, why would the last 3 feet matter?". The stronger the conviction, the more humbling the experience of hearing the power cord magic in action.

A few years back a Sophia Electric amp came into my hands with what looked like a generic power cord. The few non-generic cords I tried (Audioquest AC15, Audio Magic XSteam, Shunyata Research Diamondback) made a significant difference for the worse. The thin, black, generic-looking original cable allowed for a clarity and definition of voice and instruments that got totally washed out with the aftermarket cables. A night-and-day difference. No doubt - the power cord made a huge difference - but not in the expected direction. The Audioquest AC15 was particularly bad.

For awhile, I kept trying them around on all incoming equipment (be it DACs, preamps or amps). The AC15 sounded so bad every time that after awhile I wasn't even trying it out.

Many years and few amps later - something seemed not quite right with the presentation of my KAV-300i: slightly dull upper bass. Power cord: Zu Birth. Finally (after multiple interconnects and few speaker cable swaps) I pull out the power cord stash (same as above). This time around the AC15 was the great surprise: it allowed for clarity and macro dynamics well above the others.

What do I learn? Nothing, really. When is shielding important? When is gauge? How about the conductor or the insulation? How come there isn't one "best" design?

The magic continues.
cbozdog
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,190 posts
 
Brownsfan, I completely agree with your first paragraph. Maximizing performance can be very expensive. But if you're going to describe a .5% increase in performance as transformational, then what language is left to describe going from a system built around a good $500 mini-monitor to a full range, well chosen $30,000 system? If someone spent $100,000 for upgrades I can understand the emotional need to overstate the improved sound quality. Saying it's tranformational, night and day, blows aways, I could never go back, etc. sounds better than "it's a very small change, but musically satisfying and overall worthwhile".
brownsfan
1,508 posts
 
On hyway, I do understand the point you are making, and it has some merit. I think our disagreement is more a matter of language than substance.

I don't know anyone who went from a from a 0.5K mini to a $30K system in a single upgrade. Permit me a bit more hyperbole here, but that like asking what kind of language would have been appropriate for Orville and Wilbur to have gone from Kitty Hawk to Apollo 11 in a day. There is no point in reserving superlatives for scenarios outside of human experience.

More common is a situation where one slowly builds a system, then plateaus at a fairly high level, struggling to achieve anything further. Then, one finds something that really does make a difference. This difference could be described as trivial, or even imperceptible, to 99.9% of the population. But in our circles, one's experience of that difference can be substantial. The two observers have a decidedly different frame of reference.
newbee
4,767 posts
 
Without denying that cables, IC's, and PC can, and do, make a difference, although PC's differences are very subtle and I think are really most audible in highly resolving systems, when it comes to 'tuning' a system I'd rather spend my disposable income on tubes where the differences are more easily discerned and leaves a lot more time for listening to music. :-)
bo1972's avatar
bo1972
2,789 posts
 
Yesterday I visited a client of mine. We did a few different tests. I also had 2 Purist Audio Limited editions with me. For his Wadia 7si and Spectral poweramp it made a huge improvement. We are not talking about a few %, a very big improvement. We also did compare his MIT interconnect with the brand new Audioquest Wild Blue Yonder. This is a big improvement over MIT as well. But.....the improvement of the Purist limited edition was even bigger.

Since this date I have not tested any powercable brand which can make this level in improvement. The level in black is stunning. Also instruments and voices become more intimate. MIT would wish they could achieve this. I owned there best powercables. Those are inferior to Purist Audio powercables. Also the decay in the right and left side behind the speakers is a lot bigger. The level in 3 dimensional image between MIT and Purist Audio is big as well.

I Always say: voices become more round. This means there is more space around them and they are less flat.

instruments and voices are so much better separated than MIT powercables can ever create.

Another example; percussion, you hear the difference in height with a Purist Audio powercable.

Purist Audio is superior in what I call individual focus of instruments and voices compared to MIT.

In one year of time I beat all MIT cables with ease at different clients. Purist Audio and Audioquest makes it very easy to win from many other brands. I say; I love'm!
cbozdog OP
63 posts
 
It is a personal experience. However, if we call "zero" the level where there is some loud music coming out of the speakers and "hundred" the live, unamplified symphony orchestra or chamber group then we have a lot of dynamic range to assign percentages.

However, I'm not that subtle myself. I can only distinguish binary (e.g "night and day") between listening for the umpteenth time to a program that I already know by heart (night), and hearing it again in a better way (well... "day"). Yes, after many enjoyable additional listens post-upgrade, the previous "day" might slowly turn into dusk... and that's when the itch needs scratching again.
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