How does one account for the several hundred, or thousands of feet of copper wiring outside their control? As in the wiring inside the home, outside to the power station.
Does it matter much what the last 3 feet does when one is unable to change/upgrade the majority of electricity, which at best is at a minimum spec?
Genuinely curious
I use the best quality snake oil available and found much blacker black snakes. The rattles on the rattlesnakes gained clarity and separation. Asp me more.
That said, it did nothing for my window vipers.
I take this to mean “what’s the point of having a nice shielded cable if you connect it to the outlet that is fed by basic copper cable”. I think there are a few things to consider:
Now keep in mind that I am talking about a $30 upgrade cable vs. the $8 that came with the unit. I’m not talking about $1000 (or more!) cables here.
If anyone is curious, here are the two cables I bought:
$34:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B081TBRMMS
The point about a regenerator is reasonable. One can easily spend big bucks doing that, and if you think it is worth it, then some shielded cabling may make sense. Likewise if you are routing your cable from the wall into an RF rat’s nest, or behind large impedance loads like industrial refrigerators, it may also make sense. My ears don’t generally hear RF but I do use really nice cables from my turntable cart to the pre-amp.
Point 3, is of course the actual winner. But I’ve done enough wiring that I’m highly skeptical absent something like a regenerator that I’d ever hear a difference, and would be happy to bet actual money that 85% of people self-identifying as audiophiles could not pass an ABX test of power cables. Unless conducting by certified psychics who may or may not know the result in advance.
Me, I’ll run my washing machine on batteries before I’d spend the $ for a real regenerator.
What is the consensus around UPS/battery units? I like the idea of plugging all my gear into one so if power goes out I have time to power off my equipment. I’ve also heard that they can help with some power cleaning as well.
Can you put one as the first component from wall outlet and then from it to power distributors, power regenerators, etc?
For reference something like the following is what I’m considering.
CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD PFC Sinewave UPS System, 1500VA/1000W, 12 Outlets, AVR, Mini Tower https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00429N19W/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_BWN3JT5TDEX7X7SCHGPH?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
Thanks in advance
Using a UPS as a way of protecting the equipment makes sense. The one you point to has ‘pure sine wave’ output. This is supposed to be better than the cheaper ones. But if you run it into a regenerator, that shouldn’t matter.
Almost all of my equipment goes into a UPS. Have had equipment fail in lightning and/or squirrel on power transformer attacks. I have one nice one like you’re getting. Some tripplite ones, and a few APC which are very consumer grade. Also use just a power conditioner surge protector for emergencies, such as when I’ve swapped out a UPS for maintenance.
I didn’t take it in a bad way. In fact I have been thinking along the same lines. This is a topic that divides the audiophile community. I’m considering purchasing the $2500 PS Audio Power Plant 3 and so I am very curious about this topic.
I think I understand the arguments on either side. On the one hand people say the power supply in your audio component will isolate and convert to DC and therefore noise on the AC side is irrelevant. On the other hand, the power supply has circuitry to clean the power, but may succeed to various degrees depending on the quality of the circuit.
My current thinking is it makes sense to clean the power before sending it to the audio components. This cleaning may be done using a conditioner or through regeneration.
Given that you clean the power it makes sense to me to use a decent shielded power cable. As I showed with the links to the cables I bought, decent to me means about $30.
I think we can compare this to ‘the other’ hot topic: does it HiRes audio make sense given the sampling theorem? (I don’t mean to start a thread about that here, just to show that there can be something “there”.) Yes, it does because of how filters work in practice. A sharp filter cuts the signal but can add aliasing artifacts. So there is something more to it than ‘obvious scientific / mathematical proof’.
So I really do want to keep and open mind about power cords making a difference [at least given the presence of regenerated power], and I am hoping we can have a civilized discussion about it here.
I have been considering that exact same component, in theory it is appealing. I don’t know enough, or understand the electrical engineering aspect of it so I take a broader picture of this quandary.
Hell, I hear stuff outside my window when I have headphones on and there is no way to isolate in a city landscape.
My biggest concern is power surge/spikes messing up equipment, so I’ve focused on that. Yet still curious about the big picture on power cable and its immediate impact on what I hear.
The ps audio conditioners have a button labelled MWave, all it does, and I checked it on a scope, is change the output to not be a perfect sine wave, broader lower peaks, same RMS, and I can easily hear the difference between that and the standard out. Which at least to me implies that component power supplies are imperfect.
I personally don’t use it, but it does change things. Sounds different, not necessarily better.
I tried 4 power cables on my amp with the P3 and the differences were as dramatic as any cable I’ve tried swapping, very obvious, I sat down with my notepad to make notes on my reference tracks, and really didn’t need it, the differences were extremely obvious. Left me wanting to try more expensive power cables, not sure what my budget would be at this point.
UL rating is for product safety rather than how well a product does its intended job.
A UL rated toaster doesn’t have exposed electrical connections or pose a fire hazard but it can still make crappy toast.
It’s up to you to factor safety into your buying decisions.
I have audiophile snakes.
They are ridiculous but kinda cool looking. These were like $24 on Amazon. Cheaper on AliExpress.
I bought and returned one of those mega cables. My concerns were physical rather than electrical, for those cables can be insanely stiff. This limits routing options, and results in likely unexpected strain on the small plastic IEC sockets on the back of most equipment. The often flimsy mainstream $2 to $10 cable sockets were designed for conventional cables.
Absolutely agree. If one is running off standard wall power without a fancy UPS unit or regenerator, cables will affect basic electrical properties such as conductance, resistance, interference, etc.
See above regarding slightly different electrical properties. For a given construction material and size (e.g., copper plated aluminum, OFC, silver plated copper, pure silver) there will likely be similar electrical differences and they’ll likely be audible under some circumstances. As @ProfFalkin notes, many cables are produced in small numbers (e.g., $1,000 items) and not often critically evaluated either.
In my experience shielding always makes sense, and it may be the only thing that makes sense for us non-regenerators. My setup (and many) have a rats nest of power and RCA interconnects. Frankly, I’m less concerned about the power cables than their potential to leak and affect the very sensitive audio content RCA lines nearby.
One might look for RF/EMF leakage and hotspots with a simple meter, but I’ve never tried this. I’d want to research such products before bothering too.
I’m more concerned about the quality of power coming into the house (e.g., older, newer, shaky wiring, rats eating the insulation, overtaxed substation, etc.) and nearby RF interference. Mediocre equipment often has mediocre parts throughout, so there’s no guarantee (nor an a priori probability) that power cables will be the weakest link.
I tried something like that, and it may have smoothed the sound a bit (or was a placebo effect). Again, consider the last-three-feet impact on capacitance, resistance, and interference as a direct explanation. One can also tweak the output characteristics of an amp by changing capacitors and resistors inside the amp itself (see Bottlehead Crack and Darkvoice 336 discussions in online forums). A cable-induced change isn’t a good thing IMO because it limits the potential to directly tweak the sound downstream, as possible with a controllable EQ.
I’ve absolutely, positively heard major changes with interconnects. As above, I believe this follows from capacitance, resistance, and interference differences. One can attempt to modify the tone in a broad, general way through cables or do it directly through amps and EQ. The end results may be indistinguishable.
EDIT: Cable electrical properties calculator here: Calculation of Cable Data
I tried that one, and it kills the dynamics and smooths everything over. Not recommended.
It’s not really about modifying the tone though, IME it’s far more about blackness, staging and to some extent how the Bass and treble are presented. You can tweak a sound somewhat, but it’s a pretty blunt tool, and I’ve never heard a cable that made a system
I’ve given up trying to justify what makes a difference, and just accept what I hear.
I really do fail to see how 3 ~10 Gauge 6ft power cables could be as different as they were when plugged into a regenerator that should be outputing clean power.
Electrical differences (Inductance/Capacitance) will be small, but the only other thing I can see that could impact it is RF noise, which would vary based on geometry, but that has to be in the uV range. But the fact they have ore impact on a clean source like the regenerator, does imply it’s noise being introduced somehow.
Thanks @Wes_S, that’s good to know. I have heard that can happen and it is a major downside.
Now that I’m a home owner I’m having an electrician come out to the house and running two dedicated lines that have their own power board with surge protection and filtering. All that for about half the price of what it would cost me to buy a dedicated unit and filtering. Plus the space savings in my two setups.
I wonder if your electrician can set up a dedicated 120V/60Hz line so that your US audio equipment doesn’t have to worry about your NZ 230V / 50Hz electricity.
Ah! Thats a good thought actually.
