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Originally Posted by tourmaline /img/forum/go_quote.gif
My bet; oyade sounds better!
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Id go for the Wattgates specifically over the Oyaide 037 (silver) which are too bright. The other Oyaide products are a different story though.
BTW Patrick, at last you are on to AC connectors. These make lots of difference. Ive tried lots of ERS tweaks in the past and to me they only made about 5% difference, the biggest being lining my circuit breaker box with the stuff.
But power tweaks and optimization yields a far bigger difference. Ive tried all of the Furutech and Oyaide combinations. To me the silver and rhodium parts exagerated the high end artificially. The Furutech copper and gold are quite neutral but a bit laid back. The Oyaide Gold/Gold/Bronze sockets are clean and neutral, but the G/G/B plugs are too soft and bassy.
Where I think Patrick should start experimenting is with the SWO-XXX sockets. These give a clean tight bass and push the highs, in the way Patrick seems to like, but are not as exagerated as the Rhodium he already has. To me these seemed to push it a little more than I personally like, recessing the mids. And I have recently converted all primary plugs and sockets to the Beryllium copper/Palladium/Platinum P-004/R1 combos. This to me is the most neutral best sounding plug socket combo I have heard to date, with a warm tight bass, full midrange and clean highs. They grip like the devil, so much so that some plugs require lots of effort to get them in.
As someone who used to guffaw at fancy power cords 6 years ago, I have eaten much humble pie since and now believe that treating the power correctly all the way from the breaker panel contributes 35% to the sound of the system. Power components can also be used to fine tune and even out the frequency response without adding active components to the replay chain.
Also remember that the sockets and plugs require the usual 200+ hours break in and change too and fro quite a bit over this period - even when being put on existing burned-in cables.
BTW all of these power products have been explored and reported on over at Audio Asylum. So to cut to the chase you can read others findings to get a better perspective before spending cash to experiment. The forum member over there are far more knowledgable, open minded and are not there to thread-crap, pick fights and generally be nasty like many forum members here.