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I've tweaked cheap AC outlets and gotten improved sound. However, as with any tweaking effort, relative differences and apparent progress do not indicate how the final tweaked object compares with serious high-end products designed to accomplish the same things.To resolve for myself and decide how to get the best AC connection performance, I made a test rig to hold five outlets. My preference is the Oyaide Ultimo SWO-GX+. It allows my CD player to reveal more information, with less coloration, than any of the other outlets I tested.
Disclosure: I've known Joe Cohen, who distributes Oyaide products in the USA, for several years. I admire his hand-made cables, but cannot afford them. I have no financial interest in sales of any audio products.
My system is a Wadia 861 CD player on tweaked Lovan racks and home-made roller-ball suspension; a pair of Gilmore Audio Raptor switching monoblocks with similar suspension tweaks; Magnepan MG-20 speakers with rebuilt and tweaked crossovers and wiring; and home-made speaker, interconnect, and power cables. Each piece of electronic gear has its own dedicated AC circuit. RF noise sources throughout the house have been treated to reduce the noise they add to the AC power wiring. The performance of this system is superb with the tweaked AC outlets I had been using, and I was looking for refinement rather than major improvment in upgrading the outlets.
Five plastic wiring boxes mounted on an MDF board and wired with 3-conductor, 14-gauge plastic house wire (like Romex) in star-fashion hold the candidate outlets:
-one of my tweaked 20-ampere spec-grade Pass & Seymour (not previously used);
-Oyaide Ultimo SWO-XXX (palladium on gold plating);
-Oyaide Ultimo SWO-GX+ (gold plating);
-Furutech FP-15A (copper plating); and
-Hospital MRI-grade Pass & Seymour 8200-WMRI.
All outlets are new and not broken in. The latter two are cryo-treated, from Chris VenHaus. All wire attachment surfaces on the outlets and wire ends were cleaned with Kontak. The plug blades on the home-made power cord were polished and cleaned with Kontak.
I removed the outlet on the dedicated circuit for the CD player and wired in the test rig with standard wire nuts, with the board sitting on the floor. This was done to mimic typical house wiring environments. No outlet cover plates were used. Nonmagnetic stainless steel screws were used to attach the boxes to the board and the outlets to the boxes.
Testing was done with the CD power cord plugged into the outlet under test, with the remaining outlets still connected to the AC. It took a few seconds to reset the CD player each time after the cord was moved to a different outlet. I'm sure the additional wiring and outlets on the circuit added some noise, but the results were clear enough for my purposes.
The Oyaide devices are works of industrial art. They are finished to a higher standard. The materials from which they are made appear to be stronger, as they have distinct tonal characters when held lightly and tapped. This would be a concern if the outlets did not grip the plug blades so tightly. I believe the superior performance I heard with the Oyaide outlets is in part due to their higher strength, so that acoustic vibration cannot affect the contact resistance as much.
The Furutech and Pass & Seymour MRI outlets did not perform as well as my tweaked outlet in the matter of controlling the contact. My tweaked outlet has a lot of mechanical damping, so there is little chance for mechanical resonance to affect contact resistance at certain notes. This was revealed by some vocal overloads on the Maple Shade recording _Afterglow_ (Kendra Shank with the Larry Willis Quartet Plus Gary Bartz; 02132). The overloads cleared quickly with the Oyaide and my tweaked outlet, but the Furutech and MRI outlets emphasized and extended them.
However, I found my tweaked outlet was introducing a false midrange warmth that the other outlets avoided. This false warmth is subtle and appealing on many recordings, but causes some notes to be emphasized where the musical context does not support the emphasis. Having a number of different outlets for immediate comparison made it possible for me to detect this behavior. I believe it is an artifact of the steel back strap on my tweaked outlet. None of the other outlets tested contain steel parts.
The two Oyaide outlets allowed more real detail to come through than either the Furutech or MRI outlets. My tweaked outlet seemed to allow about the same amount of detail. The tonal balances are all different, however. I've already discussed the false warmth of the tweaked outlet. The -XXX outlet gave me a leaner and brighter sound than the -GX+. The bass seemed weaker with the -XXX, but this may be a reaction to the treble emphasis. My findings agree with the conventional wisdom about these outlets: use the -GX+ with digital gear.
I did not spend as much time with the Furutech and MRI outlets once I identified their relative weaknesses. However, it seems to me that the MRI has a more refined and neutral presentation compared to the Furutech.
Follow Ups:
One would expect them to sound different after break-in, yes? Or did I miss something?
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The question is whether any amount of break in would make a Furutech or Pass & Seymour surpass an Oyaide. I don't think so, but I'm not prepared to do the experiment.
I liked the performance of the Wadia CD player with the Oayide SWO-GX+ outlet so much that I went ahead and bought enough to complete my dedicated audio circuits with them.The sonic improvement from placing them in the circuits that feed the Gilmore Raptor switching amps is similar in kind, but different in specific balances. The bass is cleaner and subjectively deeper than it was before. The vocal timbres and air surrounding the singers have been further clarified. Good piano recordings now sound like real piano strings vibrating inside a piano case. All this is with my DIY power cords; I have not yet tried the Oyaide plugs.
Note that the spare outlet in each duplex device is used for a plug-in filter. The filter for the line that feeds the CD player is a large filament transformer with an R-C network on the secondary. The filters for the power amp circuits are multiple R-C networks connected directly to the line and neutral. These filters load the circuits at RF, to suppress the circuit resonances. They make definite improvements regardless of brand of duplex outlet.
"I liked the performance of the Wadia CD player with the Oayide SWO-GX+ outlet so much that I went ahead and bought enough to complete my dedicated audio circuits with them."While I don't have personal experience with the SWO-GX+, which I assume falls in the Ultimo line, the Oyaide outlets/plugs have been nothing short of a revelation as to how material types and resonance, have a very real effect on the quality of electricity delivered to ones system and how that quality effects the musicality of the system.
"Note that the spare outlet in each duplex device is used for a plug-in filter. The filter for the line that feeds the CD player is a large filament transformer with an R-C network on the secondary. The filters for the power amp circuits are multiple R-C networks connected directly to the line and neutral. These filters load the circuits at RF, to suppress the circuit resonances. They make definite improvements regardless of brand of duplex outlet"
If U would please, elaborate further on the plug-in filters U have described above. In addition, would they provide the same results when applied in a system powered by balanced power?
Cheers and thanx again,
I don't have much experience with balanced AC. The one time I tried it on my Wadia 861, I only heard a degradation that I believe was due to the steel case of the box I mounted the transformers in.However, if you want to filter the balanced side of such a setup, make the filter symmetrical. Use about a 60-ohm resistor on each side of the capacitor. If you know the characteristic impedance of the cabling used on the balanced side, use resistors that add up to that value.
.......I'll have to procure the parts and give 'em a whirl :-)Cheers,
The basic idea is to load the house wiring at elevated frequencies, to dampen RF ringing. There are two ways to do this.The simple way is to make R-C filters out of nonmagnetic, 120-ohm (or so) resistors in series with X- or Y-rated capacitors of different sizes, and connect them in parallel to an unplated, molded plug. The plugs are cut off dollar-store extension cords. Half-watt resistors are fine for up to 1 microfarad capacitors for 120 volts AC. The different capacitor sizes are spaced roughly by decades to as small as you can find. For extra performance, use nonmagnetic capacitors.
Note that resistors that are not flame-proof will go up like kitchen matches if the series capacitor fails to a short. Y-rated capacitors are not supposed to do this, but X-rated types might. Be sure the filters are not placed where they can set anything on fire if this happens.
The complicated way is to make R-C filters that will look like 120 ohms to the primary side of the largest filament transformer you can find, and place them on the secondary. Remember that impedance transforms as the square of the turns ratio. The transformer removes the safety requirement that the capacitors be X- or Y-rated, and adds some filtering action of its own through core losses. Just be sure to use one that does not have mechanical hum, and include a circuit breaker just in case the transformer develops a short.
The complicated filter works better than the simple one for my Wadia 861.
These filters provide benefit on unused outlets throughout the house, depending on the resonance characteristics of your house wiring. They will improve your sound when placed on some outlets, but not on others. You just have to experiment.
thanks for the time taken to compare these outlets...
I'm finding the synergy between the male plug & the outlet
are quite important.the swo-xxx outlet really likes the p-079 plug in my SS amp & vinyl system. changing to a Furu fi-11cu male plug (on my phono preamp for example) changes the sound quite a bit, not in a good way.
My home-made power cord is based on the Volex shielded 14-gauge with lots of treatments. This particular cord has a hardware store replacement plug chosen because it has a rubber body, no steel parts, and heavy brass blades that I could remove. The wires were soldered to the blades separate from the body so that I could get good solder joints without melting the body.Right before this experiment, I polished the blades with 600-grit wet-or-dry sand paper, Brasso, and cleaned the residue with Kontak.
I agree the results are plug-dependent, and different plugs have different plating recipes. Keep in mind, though, that the same plating materials used on the outlet receptacle blades are also present where the copper house wire leads are clamped to the outlet. Thus, the plating interface with pure copper is an unavoidable part of the outlet circuit.
Replacing the plug is a future experiment, and something I will have to think about.
testing out all the difft plug and outlet combo's would be a bastard of a test for sure!
My experience for the P&S and the Furu's is similar. I have used both the Cu & Au Furu's and found them to be bettered by the P&S 5242's esp. in dynamics and extension at frq. extremes.
........there is some very good info to be gleened here.May I ask why the Oyaide outlet's weren't cryo'd?
" Testing was done with the CD power cord plugged into the outlet under test, with the remaining outlets still connected to the AC. It took a few seconds to reset the CD player each time after the cord was moved to a different outlet. I'm sure the additional wiring and outlets on the circuit added some noise, but the results were clear enough for my purposes."
If I may, could I suggest that there might be parasitic resonances in the unused outlets during the test and placing child safety caps/inserts in each port of the unused outlets would dampen the resonances thereby giving a more accurate test model closer to a single outlet?
Cheers and thanx again for the report :-)
~kenster
See below for my thinking on the cryo-treatment issue.Cryo-treatment is a way of annealing stresses out of metal parts. If it relaxes the spring tension of the outlet receptacle blades, it could be a bad thing for overall performance.
hey,I have 4 SWO-XXX outlets and a pack of the child safety plugs...i've always used them in other outlets on the same circuit as my gear.
In your opinion, is there anyway the plastic that makes up the safety plugs can come off inside the outlets? Since investing in Oyaide, i don't use any Silclear or anything else..i don't want to muck up the outlets or interefere with oyaide's plating.
i want to stick the safety plugs in those outlets, but i'm not the type to open up the outlets once a year to clean the internal outlet prongs.
"In your opinion, is there anyway the plastic that makes up the safety plugs can come off inside the outlets? Since investing in Oyaide, i don't use any Silclear or anything else..i don't want to muck up the outlets or interefere with oyaide's plating."I have been using the plastic child safety plugs for about 6 months in my Oyaides with no evidence of the plastic material coming off. Even so, I would think that several repetative insertions of a male plug into the outlet would remove any deposits on the plug tongs.
I too am leary about using any kind of "treatment" on my Oyaide outlets/plugs :-)
I seen the new iso-clean AC caps and am pondering them in place of the child safety caps.
Cheers,
~kenster
Hi Al.Nice post.
I tried to find an earlier post on tweaking of receptacles by you. Did you post one? If so, would you post a link to it.
Tweaking outlets can endanger life, so I don't post details. I'm glad to say that I've abandoned my tweaked outlet approach in favor of the UL-listed Oyaide designs.Someone like tonemaniac might want to try tweaking the Oyaide outlets. He has already tweaked the plugs and gotten improved performance. If I had lots of money, I would try similar tricks on the outlets.
Hi.If the dirty power flow through the lenghty Romax type house wires before going through the best sounding & most costly AC outlets, would you expect getting the very best from your audio rig?
Here are the vulnerable parts of the power supply to your audio gears regardless how perfect would be your AC wall outlets.
(1) dirty power from the outside power grids
(2) lousy Romax type house wires which do not use oxygen free high conductivity copper strands
(3) the dirty power got further polluted by the EMI/RFI emitted from all over the place, inside & outside your residence.Have you ever consider to take care all these before going for exotic wall outlets which are minor details, IMO?
c-J
You asked, "Have you ever consider to take care all these before going for exotic wall outlets which are minor details, IMO?"Al has dedicated lines and tweaked the whole chain inside the house, so in his case, it appears that he not only considered it, he handled it.
Frankly, Jack, there isn't necessarily a unidirectional flow of current at all. It's alternating directions 60 times per second, which makes the component or cord or wall outlet just as good a place to start pretty much. OK, maybe the differences in variables here are quantifiable, but I haven't read any geniuses here that have actually done so.
Your point that it's all synergistic and cumulative I'd agree with heartily. Just not that it's a one-way street with only one solution to the problems implied...FWIW
Hi.Specify those maybe I can comment.
Also, powerline noise voltages, mainly come in from the external power grids, flow from wherever higher potential noise sources riding our mains power, to the receiving endload in our residence.
Having those EMI/RFI noises removed from the powerline should always come first. Upgrading the wall outlets will be, IMO, icings on the cake.
c-J
ssia
Hi.I have posted here a few times. You missed them.
(1) Get shortest possible dedicated power lines, with dedicted insulated ground wire, hooked up directly from my house fuse panel to my audio rig. This will eliminate local EMI/RFI noise pollution.
(2) Get power cable with OFHC copper instead of crappie Romax & alike, which mostly are made with recycled coppers.
(3) Get AC powerline conditioners at the power strips powering
the audio gears. NO need exotic power filter tanks. I built mine affordably.These are the basic issue we got to resolve first, before going for the minor details.
Is to filter everything ELSE in the house. I use the inexpensive Eupen medical-grade filtering power cords on all digital, or otherwise noise-making, devices in the house (uhm,all my clocks are either wind up or battery). I dont use any sort of filtering cords on the system itself as I have found that my gear wants to be intimately connected to the power source. (An Exact Power 15 amp unit for the low level stuff.)I do use home run wiring for the stereo with good, but not silly expensive, copper. No alumiloy, no ten-nines alchemically pure silver, no meteoric cryogenically treated metal glasses need apply. I AM still waiting for that room temperature superconductor though.....
How about repeating the experiment and reporting after significant burn in time? They may indeed change quite a bit - usually do.As you know, I'm very pleased with my Furutech copper 15A over the previous P&S tweaked outlets. So far the Furutech is my standard to beat, but at twice the price those Oyaides have to really deliver a lot more for the money.
Your system, for those who don't know, is very revealing. Not clinical, just quite nuanced. So what you're able to attain is significant with such an easy upgrade.
I'm working off a less revealing box setup - the VR1s and a cheap sub to augment them a little. Nothing near your monoblocks nor the Wadia, much less the Maggies. But beyond the source and amp, I'm wondering how the boxes vs. the planars impact impressions of tonal results, not just the nuances of detail.
One other difference for me is that I listen to quite a bit of FM radio, which I know that you don't. So there's no way to compare how these outlets might impact that kind of source, is there?
HowdyTho I'm not going to rip my eight outlets out of the walls to change :)
Were these outlets the newer "Ultimo" series.
Are the Magnepan MG-20 normally easy on the low range anyway compared to say a pair with an enclosed 10" woofer?
I am deciding between the XXX and the GX+.
Most of the positive reviews I've read of the new Oyaide's were most enthusiastic for those that had been cryo'ed the extra burn in time notwithstanding.Thanks for the feedback..
then I think Oyaide would have treated them. Oyaide is a cost-no-object audio company, but they might not have looked into the issue. Notice that Furutech treats its audio-grade outlets. I can't say whether the cryo treatment improved the Pass & Seymour MRI, as I did not have an untreated one for comparison. These are made for use in MRI diagnostic facilities, where any magnetic materials would be highly dangerous. They are not made specifically for audio.Yes, these were the 'Ultimo' Oyaide outlets.
Not sure what you mean by "low range." The bass clarity got much better with the Oyaide outlets. I believe this is because they lack steel parts, but it might also reflect their higher mechanical strength.
could you explain these vocal overloads more? what exactly is meant by that.
Mapleshade Productions is a purist and idiosyncratic recording studio. They mastered this album live to two-track analog tape without compression, according to the jacket. Specifically, on track 2, between 1:00 and 1:20, there are several instances where Kendra Shanks seems to have overwhelmed something in the chain. The distortion may be tape overload or something to do with the microphone.Generally, I find a strong sense of being present in the recording space with Mapleshade recordings. However, these overload episodes immediately destroy the magic with this one track.
Recordings with defects are sometimes better for equipment evaluation than ones that are pristine.
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