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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
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.
cbozdog OP
63 posts
 
A bit further on the dynamic ranges... for some of us perhaps "zero" is the current level of the system - whatever that is - and "hundred" would be the live unamplified performance etc..

In one previous post (Brownsfan), going from 98.3% to 99.2% might seem like a petty sub-1% improvement, but if his 98.3% is his "zero" then the improvement is a whooping 52% on the way to perfection.
cbozdog OP
63 posts
 
... and conversely, if my system is at 60% (my "zero"), Brownsfan improvement of 0.9% (a petty 2.3% in my frame of reference) would make no financial sense to me whatsoever. I'd have to take my system to 80% to perceive the same audible benefit he's getting from his upgrade.

(taking Brownsfan's example as an example, of course).
brownsfan
1,508 posts
 
Dog, I think you catch my drift. however, diminishing returns applies, and each has to determine for himself where to draw the line. I think the way this thread has turned shows that it is devilishly hard to quantify improvements once a system attains a pretty high level of performance.

I can't tell Onhwy he is wrong in pointing out that the differences one might expect from a PC swap is something short of "transformational." In the first place, I didn't not hear what he didn't hear, and he didn't hear what I heard. Even if we had heard or not heard what the other did or didn't hear, we might very well value the difference heard differently.

Im swapping out PCs, I have at least achieved the same level of improvement, maybe more, that I have achieved by tube rolling. Maybe I've evaluated the wrong tubes or someone else hasn't found the PC that makes things work for them with their equipment. Who can say with certainty?
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