Boutique power cables and power strips...useless (in my case)?

Well its not like everyone who uses power cables or audiophile power strips/filters end up upgrading wall sockets and power lines. In fact majority of the people just shove it into the regular wall socket and are quite happy with it. Without trying one out its hard to get opinions on this matter cos there are two very diverse camps when it comes to power cables. Most audio shops are quite happy to lend a power cable or filter/conditioner for you to try at home so I suggest you do so and see if its worth it to you.

Whatever you decide to do, do not buy an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) and connect your audio components to it. UPS output square waves which will distort the music which requires sine waves to perform at their best.

Please check my detailed Head-Fi user profile to understand where I am coming from before I answer your question.

You should not purchase a boutique power strip unless you are experiencing sonic degradation of your music such as distortions, clipping, hums, or intermittent blackouts. If you currently have a modest system, then I would recommend that you take stock of your sound priorities and do the research to find audio components that will accomplish those goals. Then, make the purchases to upgrade your system over time.

Be wary of the claims that boutique power strips will clean up the sound and lower the noise floor among other elaborate claims. They are patently false unless you have a malfunctioning power source.

I have a boutique  power block and cables, my power block is a 6 way silver plated block with 2metres of lapp 2.5mm2 cy cable ,a huge ferrite clamp, a silver plated mk plug and 13 amp hi-fi tuning pure silver gold plated fuse , the difference it made to my equipment was it removed all buzz/humming because the cable has it's own ground loop, with my tv equipment plugged into it i do get a slightly cleaner picture, my power cable is a markgrant dsp1.0 this made a quite a difference, less speaker hiss and a more fuller sound but the system i use it on is nothing great it's the edifier s730 a proper high-end amp will have much better power conditioning and caps and probley won't benifit so greatly from a custom cord, out of all my power based equipment my best buy was the hifi tuning UK Gold 2 Audio Grade internal fuse, in the s730 the bass gained lots of defention the sub really sped up and can deliver bass with alot more precision than it could before, also the difference is sound seperation and stereo imaging has huge, the fuse was only £25 half the price of the power cord a third the price of the extension block, yet made the biggest most noticable difference, i wouldn't bother too much with d.i.y powercords unless you have speaker hum/buzz/hiss , the difference in sound isn't worth there huge price tags, i would highly recommend you try a hifi tuning equipment fuse.

some people must have dreadful mains supplies.

just get a motor to spin a flywheel/dynamo and associated circuitry and a suitable place to hide it, and make your own, utterly perfect mains supply that would be orders of magnitude 'better' than anything commercially available :)

That is interesting. I'd never heard that, can you point me to some citations for that.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Welly Wu 

Whatever you decide to do, do not buy an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) and connect your audio components to it. UPS output square waves which will distort the music which requires sine waves to perform at their best.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles 

That is interesting. I'd never heard that, can you point me to some citations for that.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Welly Wu 

Whatever you decide to do, do not buy an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) and connect your audio components to it. UPS output square waves which will distort the music which requires sine waves to perform at their best.

 

I know that some computer power supplies don't like being put on basic UPS outlets because of this issue as well. You can get a UPS with a sine wave output, but it's more expensive. I'm opposed to using a UPS with audio components more because of the power draw issue. Current limiting is the best way to crush dynamics and generally flatten all life out of the music. Also, the boost/buck voltage regulation system you typically find in a UPS is in no way audiophile worthy.

APC sells a UPS solution that is designed for home theater and audio applications because they output sine waves. You will see advertisements for these APC products in the high fidelity and home theater magazines from time to time. It is an ideal, but it is an expensive solution. You can safely plug in high fidelity audio components to these APC products and connect your home theater or computer to the same UPS too.