[music_man]

it is always said use your best power cord first from the wall. i would think just the opposite. if the power conditioner is doing it's stuff properly it shouldn't matter what you feed into it so long as it can carry enough current. am i right or is the former statement right? this does not make sense to me.

thank you,
music_man

 

[BIG POPPA]

To me, what cable sounds the best going to the conditioner. I have a power conditioner and a High-end power strip. I see your point. I go by sound.

 

[music_man]

yes, but with a quality power conditioner it should cmpletely take away any sonic signature that cable has once the power leaves the other side. a proper power conditioner should output a near perfect sinewave,capacitance,voltage etc. maybe it does make a difference somehow. scientifically it should not. of course there is no quantifiable science behind cables anyhow

so once we throw that notion out the window i guess, indeed it can make a difference!

thanks big poppa. you made me look at the situation differently!

music_man

 

[BIG POPPA]

Dude, let me throw you another curve ball? OK you have 3 power cables, they are made from the same cable. BUT, one has copper plugs, one has gold plugs, and the last has rhodium plugs. Depending on the gear one is going to sound better than the other. That is the one you hook up.

 

[music_man]

so you consider the power conditioner to be a piece of "gear", such as a headphone amp or preamplifier etc?

i did not consider that either.

music_man

 

[TheAttorney]

The consensus, of comments from manufacurers and from some forum members, is that the Power Conditioner needs the best possible input in order to best do it's job. Secondly, most PCs have one inlet and several outlets - so if the best cable goes on the inlet, then all the outlets will equally benefit.

The first conclusion implies that PCs can't be perfect, and why should they be? Nothing else in hifi or life is perfect (otherwise PCs wouldn't make a difference).

I can't speak from personal experience on this point, as my Audience PC's inlet uses a locking Powercon connector instead of the more common IEC. Results in a very solid connection, but it makes cable comparisons impossible without going to a lot of trouble.

On the point about treating PC's as gear, I treat ALL components as black boxes, whose replacement may or may not affect the sound quality. Doesn't matter if it's headphones, DACs, cables, fuses, conditioners or the power lines going to your house (the last a bit tricky to replace!).

Long ago, I started to go cold on measurements and science - when the established science of the day said that all you had to worry about a turntable was that it measured well on wow&flutter and rumble, and the arm had to be as light as possible to hold the highest complience cartridge. Then along came Linn Sondek and moving coil cartridges to show that the established science of the day wasn't looking in the right places.

I'm still always interested in the theory of, say, why a filter-based conditioner may or may not be better than a regenerator, or where the best cable should go. But I don't let it rule what I'm about to hear when I swap that black box. Whenever I've set an expectation based on common sense, the subjective listening experience has taken me by surprise.

 

[fhuang]

Quote:

Originally Posted by music_man /img/forum/go_quote.gif so you consider the power conditioner to be a piece of "gear", such as a headphone amp or preamplifier etc? i did not consider that either. music_man

i always thought even a cable is a piece of gear. ok back to the topic, sort of. i don't have a power conditioner but i do have a power strip(ps audio juice bar ii) and to me, the difference is more obvious with the power cord plug either the amp(s) or the cd player(s) than the one plug to the wall.

 

[music_man]

ok. done. i put my best(well most expensive) power cord on the inlet. i thought i was getting more mileage out of it on my headphone amp though. i will listen more before i really decide.

my reference system has everything the same. it is just my beroom system which i decided to start "tasting" different cord flavors with.

i have been using pass and seymour 20 amp male plugs. they have a nickle neutral blade and a copper hot blade. this is obviously for hospitals and commercial applications. so you can instantly tell which is which. i wonder if this is the wrong connector to be using with good cables due to that? or if in fact in some odd way it could improve sound quality? i can't tell. p&s makes the marinco but it is not as robust.

thanks,
music_man

 

[BIG POPPA]

Quote:

Originally Posted by music_man /img/forum/go_quote.gif so you consider the power conditioner to be a piece of "gear", such as a headphone amp or preamplifier etc? i did not consider that either. music_man

Absolutely!

 

[Seamaster]

little side track:
In my case the gear that draws more power is more affected by PC. I plug my amp into wall, because sound more dynamic that way. But CDP not affected by having power conditioner in the middle to my ears. I always try to keep one complete power chain with one type of PC. Put different PC before filter type conditioner does change the sound.

 

[Uncle Erik]

music_man, the other take on this is that none of this matters whatsoever.

I came to that conclusion having repaired, built and tested power supplies. And measured them.

If something supposedly fixes a problem, there has to be a problem in the fitst place. Otherwise, you're simply putting a cast on an arm that isn't broken. You can go on and on about the quality of the cast, but if your arm isn't broken, it doesn't do anything.

Have you looked into how a power supply actually works? Not just marketing copy for various things people are trying to sell you, but actually what happens when you apply wall current to a transformer and then filter it into DC?

I strongly suggest doing so before buying anything else. Did you know that power supplies are engineered to remove line noise? It's true. You can buy the parts yourself, measure noise off the line and see for yourself what happens when you implement traditional power supply construction.

 

[music_man]

i know this uncle erik. i just think power cords are cool now for whatever reason i don't even know. so i figured if i am going to use them i might as well do what other people that use them say to do with them.

my ac is way out of spec. the high end power conditioner made a night and day difference and i can measure it. power supplies usually are built to deal with ac that is near spec. if the ac is very poor than it appears you have to clean it up some.

as far as the power cords, well built ones for $50 would have sufficed indeed. it is just my latest thing to collect. as with most collections it is rather expensive. the only real issue is they have hardly any resale value down the road. most of my other collections have actually gone up in value.

power cords can affect the sound by pumping in capacitance and throwing the power supply out of spec. i don't really see that as a good thing. i probably degraded my sound with a bunch of different brands of power cords. i honestly cannot say what prompted me do get all these all of the suddon.

music_man

 

[BIG POPPA]

Different brands is not the issue. A different cable may synergize with each piece of equipment? It is all good. Trust your ears, if it sounds good, it sounds good!

 

[DaveBSC]

Definitely put your best cord between the wall and your conditioner. All passive conditioners (cap, coil, or transformer based) are not spitting out perfect AC waveforms regardless of the cable used to connect them to the wall. They need ultra high current capable cords that are giving them the best possible power to work with to do their jobs.

Even active regenerators like the PS power plants and ExactPowers benefit from incoming cord upgrades. I think this is because the PS models at least are essentially amplifiers, and they benefit from cord upgrades like any other amplifier.

In my experience, the power supplies in ultra high end, $20K+ equipment are so good that they really don't need much in the way of extra line conditioning. A basic, $1000 amplifier though absolutely needs all of the help it can get.