quick advice please - Page 2

Rick

I agree that it does and does enough to make it a real consideration versus the HD600. But I still found in the Corda's 120ohm adapter that it was still a little bit brighter than neutral. Nothing like the Grado SR-325 or anything.

When I heard Nick's Outlaw, I didn't find them to be all that far from neutral either, but since I didn't get a chance to AB and everyone who has says the err slightly warm, I thought it might offset that.

Regardless, the Outlaw is probably a better choice than the Monster. Else for other affordable cables see Bolder Cable or DIYcable.com.

isotope
The Corda has a PSU built in so I don't think you really wanted any information there. For power cables, I'm using a DIY Ven Haus with mine but got to audition a couple others. They do matter but there seems to be a point of diminishing returns hovering around ~$50. People here have gone on and on about the Virtual Dynamics so if you can still get one for $50, I might go that route if I were you. (It's normal price is $100, I think.)

For surge protection, there's no gentle way to say this: most surge protectors are complete crap. The good ones are by a company called Brick Wall and unfortunately cost ~$250. This may still be worth it to you if you have a great deal of other equipment plugged into the same Brick Wall such as your PC or Home Theater. If you do spring for the Brick Wall, do get the "audiophile" version as each of its connectors are isolated and that matters a lot if you end up plugging in monitors or different audio components. Keep in mind that this is the best solution for *surge protection*, not for filtering. In my opinion, protecting your equipment is more important than noise filtering but you get really ambitious, you'll want to pair a the Brick Wall with a regenerator or filter. Jude has reviewed some of these and is currently using one in conjunction with his Brick Wall. Honestly, although I think the power stuff is worth checking into, it's not your biggest bottleneck in your Corda. If you're going to spend that much effort and money, look into upgrading the Corda (see KurtW for that) or other amplifiers first--there's more to be had there. Surge protection isn't bad anyway though, especially if you have a lot of incidents like I've had.

isotope
I see where you're coming from now. Minor vocabulary correction: A power supply shouldn't be confused with a power strip or surge protector. The power supply is the thing *inside* your Corda HA-1 that you plug a cable into and it's the part of my Corda that *I* want to upgrade.

Surge protectors come in a wide range of quality from crappy to mediocre. The mediocre ones won't mess with your sound that much and will protect you from approximately one major power surge. After that you *should* throw it away and buy another one or you'll only get more noise and less protection than you started with. This is pretty much true of every surge protector on the market except the Brick Wall. There may be others like the Brick Wall but I haven't seen them yet.

I use a fairly low end surge protector strip at work but I work in a cube farm where the power is 1) already protected from serious voltage spikes and 2) never very clean (so adding the strip isn't going to make it much worse).

At home where I live, using anything less than the Brick Wall is wreckless. I've lost countless video cards, hard drives, monitors, PSUs, modems and controller cards -- and even damaged one headphone amp in my apartment. Is your situation this bad? Probably not, but it's different everywhere. You'll have to guage your own need for protection there.

I would worry a lot more about the protection than the effects on dynamics at the level your system is at. To get marginal improvements in power tweaks will cost you a lot more than making other upgrades would cost you. Plugging into the wall versus a power strip may be better for you if the power strip is a bad one (or has gone bad) but with a mediocre strip the difference would be small.