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In Reply to: RE: If all house wiring is of a given quality, how does an exotic power cord improve sound? posted by hcman on May 6, 2010 at 08:36:46
hcman
You bring up very good points and truthfully under basic signal of voltage measurement,you won't find a difference.
What they are basically doing with the better cords is,putting a braided shield over the cord and it acts as a shield for RFI and thats what does the trick. I have a 900 dollar MIT power cord I got in some stuff I bought on an insurance deal,with some stuff that was hit by a surge and the cord was brand new and not used in a box. Anyway I got it and a mid price straightwire brand cord that ran 589 when I looked it up.I got less than 70 dollars in both of them when I figured the price.
Anyway I hooked them to different amps I had with IEC plugs and used the standard cord that came with the amps for comparisons. There were differences,but not as big as you would think because I use a balanced power conditioner because I run mostly modded vintage gear.
Anyway I did some investigating and had gone to home depot and got some 10 guage 3 conductor cord and I got 30 feet of braiding for 10 guage wire from an electrical supply house and I got some quality ends on ebay for 30 dollars total.You slip the braiding over the cord and solder one end to the grounding 3rd prong and leave the other side undone that goes into the wall.This is all you need to do and this is the main thing they do in these big expensive cords. I had talked to a guy name Don Resig that worked at one of the cable companies and I got the low down for verification on what they did.You then put heat shrink over the braided wire all the way down of course. I promise,you will not be able to tell the difference in the cords I have that cost big bucks and you can make this cord for about 50 bucks.I ran it without the power conditioner and the biggest difference I found was the nonshielded stock cords were not as quiet so the backgrounds were not as clear.
Anyway,all three cords including the one I made for 50,was as good as the other two and this is on martin logan CLXs and the same results I got with my first octave angel horns.
Now truthfully,a soldered in cord will be much better than any slip on cord because you won't get micro arcing at the plug like you will with an IEC plug. You wrap it,solder it,and thats that. I then put shielding on the power cord from the chassis ground back.
SilClear is something really nice to use on wires and cables especially cords because it fills in valleys in the metal and makes a better conductor.
I live in Saginaw Michigan and if anyone wants to come over and hear the setup,you are welcome to come and we can some music and you can decide.
If the power supply waveform isn't pretty,neither is the sound in most cases.
Edits: 05/07/10Follow Ups:
"You slip the braiding over the cord and solder one end to the grounding 3rd prong and leave the other side undone that goes into the wall.This is all you need to do"
This is what you recommend? You realize your telling others to leave the safety ground open at the wall? Do you realize your telling others it is acceptable to be in violation of electrical code because that is what the big boys do? What if someone has a problem and got shocked or has a fire because what you recommended?
I am familiar with protection and shielding of electrical cables and what you are saying is wrong. In industrial signal wiring the device end is left unterminated and taped back. The signal end is run to an earth ground to drain any stray EMF or RF to ground, this is on DC and digital signal not 120V AC. Which happens to be the opposite of what you are saying.
Actually, you are both correct, if I am interpreting what you're saying correctly. The end of the shield that is *usually* directly grounded is the source end. Which is at the plug end for AC. And at the preamp end if going to an amp, or at the player end if going to a pre, etc. This is typical SOP, but not guaranteed to be best in all cases.
Your ground is already hooked up in the amp thru the 3rd prong ground that is already there. All this shield does is go to the chassis basically and along the cord like an antenna.You are not leaving anything open or violating code. All this is is a braided shield that goes around the outer insulated cord,capiche?? You then cover that.
If the power supply waveform isn't pretty,neither is the sound in most cases.
That's what I did for an 83803 based cord I use for my preamp. Here's a visual to help out. All three conductors are live.
While you may debate the value, many aftermarket cords use higher quality connectors and something other than standard copper that necessarily cost more. Nice Wattgate or Furutech plugs / IEC jacks will set you back $100-$150 alone. The Harmonic Technology Magics use six nines silver wire for the hot and neutral wires. That's why they cost more than fifty bucks. :)
rw
Actually Rw
you are the one that gave me the idea how to do this and I did this to my citation 2 amps over the cords. You and I used to have cord discussions and being you have Soundlabs ESLs,I know you have revealing equipment just as I do with the CLXs. This is what made me investigate it.
If the power supply waveform isn't pretty,neither is the sound in most cases.
way to accomplish what the boutique guys charge big bucks for.
You may be able to duplicate the bottom/lower tiered PC's in most cable manufacturers line-up but when you get up into the top tier cables, this is where one starts to hear vast performance improvements.I can assure you, one will NOT be able to duplicate what Synergistic Research is doing in their active shielding Tesla line of PC's or what AudioQuest is doing in their DBS WEL PC. I would also have to say that trying to copy/build an Elrod Statement Gold PC, for example, would be damn near impossible without the proper equipment that most DIY's cannot afford, and that includes the cold-welds used on the AQ cables, not to mention the talent and time it takes to build one of these PC's!!
I've toured a very prominant high end cable manufacturing facility and I can assure you, it takes great talent, time, and the proper equipment to build a top tier cable. If one wants to just "assemble" a damn fine high performance PC that only requires wire strippers and a screwdriver, get some Acrolink P-4030 cable and terminate the ends with one of the Oyaide and/or Furutech male/female connectors of choice and blow most bottom/lower tiered PC's clear out of the water but be prepared for a LONG break-in period!
And we haven't even begun to talk about high end outlets... bwahahaha :-)
~
Edits: 05/08/10
You may be able to duplicate the bottom/lower tiered PC's in most cable manufacturers line-up but when you get up into the top tier cables, this is where one starts to hear vast performance improvements.
I don't buy that for that for one solitary minute. You only have so much you can do with that cord as far as shielding noise and then you have the weakness of IEC input plug going into your amp. Those aren't any better than the average garden variety plugs.You would have to change that insert plug because now thats a weaker link of the two and thats why you will be limited no matter how good you think that cord is.I thought the same you did and I think 1100 dollar cord isn't bottom line cord.
When you want to make real improvements in gear,you have to go inside the unit and mod the power supply.Look at any of these places that do modifications and see how many change AC cords and see how many go inside the unit to make improvements. Your AC cord is only as good as your weakest link and thats a given. I have done enough equipment rebuilding and modding and using real measurements to see whats going on. Your better AC cords are filtering RFI and you can only do so much with a cord. I would much rather have a cord that wraps around and solders to the primary windings of the power transformer than to have something that slips on over an IEC plug in a half ass way.
Now a good balanced power conditioner along with a good 10 guage cord thats shielded,will be really nice. We weren't talking about a PC cord. RW and I were talking about a 10 guage 3 conductor cord with braided shielding and wrap.
Its sort of like these IC's where they put these matching transformers on them from making the wires so thick so they will work. I find more and more people using the smaller cords because higher frequencies always travel better on smaller wire.I will admit that bass energy may appear a little stronger with inner links that are as big as a cobra snake however,you have other issues with thick IC so it becomes a tradeoff.
If the power supply waveform isn't pretty,neither is the sound in most cases.
Edits: 05/08/10
You may not buy it but hearing one of SR's Tesla power cords with active shielding connected and then disconnected is NOT subtle in the least, even on a stock IEC inlet such as is implemented on my Mac MC275 mk IV. On my Pass Labs Aleph 3 amp, I did change the IEC inlet for a cryo'd Furutech FI-10 and changed the wiring from the IEC inlet with 10 gauge silver teflon coated wire over to the transformer and the differences in the active shielding when connected/disconnected were even more pronounced!!I'm not sure what SR is doing exactly or how they are implementing the active shielding inside the power cord, and they are not divulging the info, but the truth is in the details and the active shielding is easily heard as a substantial improvement in low level detail and background noise elimination. I also use high current balanced power in my main rig and even there, the SR cables are a huge step above in detail retrieval, bass agility and low level noise reduction than well made non-shielded or shielded cables.
Also if I may, riddle me this? In theory, a true AC regenerator should not be affected in the least by the quality of the power cord used as it regenerates perfect AC but on my PS Audio P-600, which I've changed the IEC inlet to an FI-10 and changed the wiring from the IEC inlet over to the EMI/RF filter and then to the main PCB with the same wire used in the Aleph 3, using different power cords is easily heard with stock molded non-shielded, and even the stock shielded cable supplied with the P-600, sounding the worst of all the cables tried.
The most articulated, quiet and musical was a power cord made with Oyaide Tsunami cable with Oyaide P/C-046 connectors."We weren't talking about a PC cord. RW and I were talking about a 10 guage 3 conductor cord with braided shielding and wrap."
I think you're confusing my term of "PC" with Personal computer, I am using it in an abreviation for Power Cord if I understand your sentence there correctly.
~
Edits: 05/08/10
Kenster
Im glad you cleared much of this up.I did think you meant PC because thats the term we commonly associate with personal computer. I have much of same equipment you do only my mc275 of course is the vintage one but I upgraded all the components to with unilytic poly filter caps and russian k40s and vit qs and then I have a couple power conditioners and one is a Sola. It puts out a perfect sine wave but its so noisy from the huge transformer that I had to bury it and then run cables in. It came from the college I used to teach at and they gave it to me.
I also have a panamax I run my C20 preamp on that as well as my cit one preamp and all my turntables. I also got another one for work bench and thats a story I will tell you about when we have some time. It was a lifesaver is all I can say.
If the power supply waveform isn't pretty,neither is the sound in most cases.
I shall quote my colleague Andrej Persin (apologize for "google" translation):
"The impact of the power cable is, as far as I understand, that the power cord acts as an antenna. Indeed, the electric current flows in cable "impulsely" (because so are the capacitors in the audio devices loaded). For this reason, a certain magnetic field is created around the cable. Cables from power station have nothing to do here, the important is only the part closest to the audio device. The biggest source of disturbance is an audio device itself with the way sipping current. If the device itself consumes nothing, there are no power cord disorders. Therefore, the various generators of clean electricity are completely bosh (provided that we have guaranteed voltage in the power socket). So, cable emits magnetic field in the form of heavily distorted 50Hz sine with accentuated odd harmonics. This magnetic field then affects the magnetic fields of audio cables and other equipment, and the sound, which is modulated by this power supply disorder, changed character. So, theoretically, it is quite possible that the cables with a different thickness and spacing of conductors, because of the forms of magnetic field around the cable, affect the audio devices differently. As for me, a solution is not in the best materials in the form of silver conductors and gold wire outlets, because they do not only reduce the detrimental effect on sound. The only sensible solution is shell for power cables, the best when made from sheet iron."
Brzi
Thats an excellent explanation that you gave and it makes perfect sense. The thing is also,if it weren't for all the interference from digital communications on the line,there wouldn't be as much need for the perfect shielding because thats basically what we are shielding from,which is digital communications and magnetic fields as you had mentioned.
Now, here would come another point of dismay and contradiction for most. Lets say you create the finest and purest AC cord you can make or find. Once you you go beyond the point of the power cord, you are inside the amp such as a tube amp that has three transformers and maybe a choke or two underneath. Surely,the iron will create a magnetic field and that in turn will no doubt affect sonic behavior. This is why I have been using MU metal for shielding on some transformers.
If the power supply waveform isn't pretty,neither is the sound in most cases.
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