Power cords

[watchdog]

Anything and everything to do with power snakes !

1. Placement

Which place gave you the best results for your power cord ? If you use a power distributor, was it from wall to distributor, or distributor to component ? What about component ? Source or amp first ?

2. Gauge

Did you find any correlation between the sound and gauge ? The thicker the better ?

3. Construction

Were you able to discern any sonic signature from construction ? E.g. Solid core vs stranded, copper vs silver, shielded ?

4. Length

Shorter or longer ? Which worked better for you ?

For me,

1. Distributor to component had more effect than wall to distributor. Changing the power cord for source components seems to have more effect than the power amps.

2. Thin gauge cords never seemed to have worked for me, even for very low current demands.

3. No pattern as far I can hear.

4. Longer works better for me compared to shorter. Longer cords seem to highlight the characteristics of the cable more, while very short cables (1m and less) sound a bit nervous and brittle.

[jb]

For my system:

1. same experience with you, power cord to source components seems to have the most effect.

2. can not tell the difference..

3. yes, different brand of power cord will sound difference, I find generally Cardas will tends to roll off HF but give a good mid range and bass, where as those using Silver cable tends to give more high details but weak bass. and those power cord that use filter type has great effect on cdp source component.

4. cannot tell much difference as usually use the stock 1.5 or 2m power cord.

[benlzy]

1. Can't comment much here since I'm using the Job Integrated which is a dac/pre/power combined into one! Though I do encounter more differences with my cord into the Job than for example, a cord into power conditioner.

2. In my own experience, a cord with thicker gauge often sounds fuller with more body and bass. Some do sound overly thick and congested, but the good ones often don't. Similar to Watchdog, thin cables didn't work out too well with me.

3. Not that I'm able to tell. I've heard silver cords that sound warm and full, and copper cords that sound bright and harsh, so now I don't really care what construction or material a cord is made out of, only whether it works in my system or not.

4. Have not had the chance to test longer cords vs shorter cords of the same model, but the default length for most of my cords are 5-6 feet.

[WildRain]

The experience with thin power cords is mostly inline with everyone here, plixir elementa is an exception though in my case.

[bear1014]

1. pc to source shall pay more attention to it, for sound tuning. it will b good to avoid rhodium plated or silver plated plug of pc first unless you are very confident it works well without overly bright sounding(from source equipments)

2.pc thicker gauge (9-11awg) for power. for source, need not too thick, possibly 14awg is good enough for full body sounding.

3. worry about those silver coated copper. rectangular copper is also a good option.

4. long vs short, no comment.

it is good to hear that bro Wildrain got to try plixir element pc. i bought a trade-in plixir BAC after reading review in this website n was not given the elementa pc but sales posting shows pc comes with every purchase

[watchdog]

One comment on plated connectors (whether its the IEC, AC plug or AC receptacle). I found that un-plated connectors have a fuller and more wholesome sound. However, from a pure resolution point of view, plated surfaces like rhodium tend to have a spotlight effect with very obvious highlighting of microdetail. Gold for me has uniformly sounded warm and a little bit thick.

BTW, for the elementa PC, it was only bundled from a certain point onwards - I recall that the earlier customers of the BAC did not get the power cord. Don't feel bad about it. I just got an Elite BAC, and there is no power cord given either !