I'm sure that there are disgruntled users, as with just about any audio product, but there are plenty of gruntled users as well. Interestingly, I had the opposite experience as Vertigo-1 with the 9000-ES. I thought the APC provided a very nice improvement. Although, since my primary use of the 9000ES is DVD, the place I saw improvement most was in the video output.

I think I will eventually upgrade to the Totem Acoustic Urts anyways as I've had one hell of an enjoyable experience with their interconnects, and I totally dig their speakers (unrelated of course). But I figured power cords being a whole new turf to me, that I'd start low and scale upward if I heard a difference.

#2 rings true in my experience, and the more i experiment with power cords (been through 6 brands/diy, probably 10 models) the more subtle the differences become.

however, i recently moved my line conditioner (monster hts2500) into a second headphone only system, leaving the components in the main (speaker) system plugged directly into the wall with aftermarket cords. the main system sounds much more dynamic than before, although with a slightly higher noise floor.

discoman,

when making diy cords take the time to get good termination for the plug to increase contact area. also, the best tweak i've had was replacing the wall receptacles with hospital grade outlets... ultra cheap and once again, increases contact area with the plug. better conductivity to the mains power is possibly the principal reason after market cords work so well.

best,
carlo.

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That was only an analogy. The power conditioner would be the source, the power cable from the conditioner to your amp be the IC--and the sinusoidal voltage signal would be the 'audio signal'.

The power conditioner having (hopefully) changed the noisy wall outlet voltage signal into a clean, sinusoidal voltage signal, it would be the job of the power conditioner to transmit the 'signal' to the amp's transformer without 'distorting' or introducing 'noise'.

Now if the power cable (from the power conditioner to the transformer!) is bad, it _might_ act like a bad IC, distort and introduce noise to the power 'signal', and undo the work that the power conditioner had done.

If there is no power conditioner in the first place, the 'signal' itself is distorted and noisy and it is less worthwhile to have a quality cable ('IC')

My so humble unexperienced opinion,
Joe

OK, so I took the plunge and ordered two of the new Virtual Dynamics cords. One is the standard Power 3 at the introductory price of $50 (will be $150-$200), the other is a cryogenically-treated version of the Power 3 which is actually newly available as of today! Supposedly, only cables costing over $1000 have the cryo process today. Again, the $75 price is an introductory one. Don't know final price of the cryo cable.

I will post findings here:
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showth...061#post120061

markl

Power cords of the proper guage are all you need. They are POWER cords, not interconnects or speaker cables. When you start listening to pure 60 cycle power, fine. A good power conditioner will make a difference. For me, I will not believe a power cord will make a difference until I hear it.

But if you have money to throw away. Fine. But I like other toys, and music, and records, and SACD, and MP3 and Pizza. Power cords???

BAH! Humbug!

I use DIY Ven Haus power cords and got a noticable improvement but believe it may be due to my exceptionally noisy environment (bad apartment electricity, computers, video games, HT equipment, etc). I noticed an increase in bass response and blackness immediately. Was it huge? No. Was it price/performance effective? Probably not. But it was there.