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Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics.

RE: Good points.

Wow, that's really interesting.

Off-hand bundling excess power cord so that it's shorter and kept away from interconnects seems seems like a good idea and I think most of mine aren't but in general the excess is on the floor. I'll do them next time I'm in there, it's tough because I can't get to the back of the system directly. But bundling the power cords and interconnects together??? Probably not a good idea for me at least since most of mine aren't shielded and the E coupling would wipe me out. But shielded ones may be another matter and that sure would reduce the local loop area but depending on how they lay could add a great deal of coupling between the line and interconnect which may be bad even with shielded cables. Again, how can you predict an uncontrolled system???

I do however believe in keeping the power cords, at least the safety grounds if they exist plugged into the same point as much as possible. Now I've not done measurements, even by ear, to support that but it just seems reasonable to me that you don't want stray signal currents wandering through your house wiring. My guess is when to couple and when to isolate just depends on too many things to be generally predictable so the best bet is to just try various configurations. If one piece of gear puts a lot of hash out the power cord then that one may work better isolated.

By the way, I didn't mean to imply that changing power cords, interconnect cables and all that was a bad thing, just that it probably doesn't have as much traction as trying to fix the problem more directly. But, it's a lot more practical and easy so I do the same thing. But, if I can't 'fix' a problem with a Z-bead, reconfiguring the wiring, etc I sure would delve into the gadgets where the problem really is than spending kilobucks hoping that some magic is going to cast it's spell upon my gear.

But speaking of magic, do you know much about headphone connectors? No, I'm being serious, quit laughing. Years ago I happened to discover by accident that some 1/8" to 1/4" adapters sound better than others. What the heck's going on? Well more recently I got tired of the headphone jack poking me in the gut on my newish laptop (what idiots would put the headphone output on the front?? My old one was on the side) and stopped by a radio shack to see if they had some suitable connectors to build a little jumper cable. (easier than losing weight) As it turned out they had the very thing I needed, a right angle 1/8" thingy. It works great, far more comfortable. But, are you ready for it? It has a negative affect on the sound. Grrrr. Any ideas?

Rick


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