AC Outlet w/ Clairity, Trasparency, Bass Weight

relating to the concept of 'leanness' is the issue of 'bloat'. when bass becomes over ripe or boomey then that is a much bigger problem than a touch of leanness. and some power products particularly power cords can just sound too heavy. there is an overlay of excess bass energy.

agility is more important to me than bass weight.....i'll tend to balance a system more toward neutrality. bass bloat will sometimes be enjoyable on some music; but over time it detracts from the music. and a 'fat' bass balance will obscure deep bass artricualtion and ambience retrieval.

Oyaide R-1 outlets and WPC-Z covers are not lean; however, they will tend to clean up 'fuzz' in the signal path and detail will pop out. if your system is edgy maybe you might prefer the 'fuzz'.

My Full Review on the Maestro outlets is in the Member Reviews here on audiogon in the Accessories. You can go read it there.

The thing is how one reacts to perceived "leanness". Lean to me does not mean lacking bass, but more that the bass is tight, well damped and articulate with detail. The other extreme is a fatter and looser bass, which works well with some kinds of acoustic music but can sound noticeably sloppy with say more electronic or pop/rock forms and somewhat mushy as well with other forms.

Bass is largely about listening venue acoustics and listener preferences. There is no absolute right and wrong. What sounds good to one listener most likely will not to another.

I do not use the power strip on my amps in order to not inhibit current delivery as needed, but do use it to good effect with everything else.

perceived relative leanness goes along with with increased transparency and clarity usually.
07-30-10: Mapman

On that we agree totally Mapman. I've had that same experience almost exclusively. If a high end power product can improve clarity, and transparency without adding leanness then for me that's a winning piece. I can't remember such a piece.

Mapman, I have not found any leanness with the maestro outlets at all.

That will be interesting.

My limited experience with power tweaks has been that perceived relative leanness goes along with with increased transparency and clarity usually.

Hifisoundguy, thanks. After the outlets have been in a while, let us know about the bass weight of your system compared to before the outlets. I personally dislike any leanness whatsoever. The increased transparency and clarity you're getting is very positive.

I am no expert but I would consider Shunyata products for a power source upgrade. Most of what I have heard regarding these products indicates a good focus on function, value, and sound engineering principles which is about all I would expect in this arena as opposed to some black box products out there that produce their results magically and for mysteriously high cost as well.

"My (horn speakers) with (cheap solid-state gear) completely disappeared now!... "

That can happen whenever something positive happens with the power supplied to the gear.

When I first introduced a Monster power conditioning strip into my system several years back, my Carver electronics then driving my Triangle monitors suddenly took a huge step forward into transparency and clarity that did not exist prior.

Mapman, a have a very low level system...vintage sansui sp-5500 horn speakers, marantz pm 7001 integrated amp and matching marantz cd player, dh labs power plus power cables, very very cheap copper interconnects from Wal-mart, Synergistic Research alpha quad active speaker cables. My system has never ever sounded this Damn Good! It sounds like a whole new system with these maestro outlets in it. I was thinking about upgrading my gear but NOT anymore! My (horn speakers) with (cheap solid-state gear) completely disappeared now!...

HFSG,

What is the rest of your system?

outlets and ac power have no sound. It can only enable the components powered that do produce sound to perform better at best. So it would be helpful to know what those are.

Foster_9, The Transparency is amazing with these new maestro outlets after they settle-in a little bit... I am lovin it! I hope it gets even better as time goes by. This is truely remarkable!

Foster_9 .The maestro outlets have only been settling-in for 4 full days and nights playing music non-stop and these outlets are already much better than my porter ports..clearly superior! They are the most neutral and most accurate outlet I have ever heard! I want to wait and see how much more they impove in the next month or so.

Keep us posted Hifisoundguy.

Well, I got my maestro outlets for my whole audio/video system and I want to wait a week or two so these outlets can settle-in good before I say anything about how they sound. What I can say is how they look with video, my HDTV picture looks sharper when compared to my porter ports and the colors look more natural. It looks more like I'm looking through a window now! All this from just a outlet....more to come later.

Grant-that sums up what usually happens on these threads--best description yet --Rich

This kind of thing is approaching paranoia: "I can hear when they switch from burning coal to burning gas at the power utility station 30 miles away. I figure that gas burns cleaner and therefore I get a cleaner sound on my system."

Be careful as you proceed down this path - sense check anyone?

Never installed outlets before but was around while an electrician did 15A FIM's. Each outlet didn't take long. I'll leave it to an electrician who hopefully won't balk at putting a new 20A outlet on a 15A circuit, which is out of code.

Zargon,

Mikelavigne... do you think there is there any such correlation with your system? For example, do you live next to an industrial complex or out in the forest?

i live 30 miles east of Seattle in the mountains.....in a development of 3 to 6 acre lots.....next to a wilderness area---protected watershed. i have my own transformer out on the road and have a dedicated home run to a dedicated panel in my separate building (a barn) away from my house. there is nothing but trees and homes within 4 miles of my home. and there is a 4000 foot ridge between my home and any significant development.

my system is inherently quiet in terms of power. i have almost zero ambient noise inside my room. yet there are still performance improvements there to be had with power grid upgrades.

my next planned upgrade is to add an isolation transformer upstream of my dedicated panel. i'm seriously considering the Equi=tech Wall Panel System.

All -- it takes about five minutes (or less) to install an outlet. Admittedly it takes a lot more time to listen to them. But of course, we all love listening anyway.

It seems reasonable to assume that if changing anything between the audio equipment and the power at the main panel makes such a dramatic degree of improvement, there must be something very unusual (read non standard) about the basic AC line voltage source. Conversely one would expect that the closer the AC line voltage source is to the theoretical standard that equipment is designed for, the less effect any changes would be. If one could identify and better yet measure some of these offending artifacts, it might help determine the need for and type if changes (outlets, power cords, etc.) that would improve the system performance.

My first system was in a large highly populated metropolitan suburb surrounded with light industrial plants. A dedcated subpanel, ISO, and Porter Ports reduced the noise floor dramatically. Now, I live in a rural area not too far from a power generation station, and close to the power pole stepdown transformer. While I still use that same power conditioning equipment, it makes far less of a difference.

Mikelavigne... do you think there is there any such correlation with your system? For example, do you live next to an industrial complex or out in the forest?

Anyone else have the same experience? This might help some avoid overspending or doing time consuming comparisons where not necessary. Wouldn't it be great if some research would identify some of the key offending power attributes? Note I'm not speaking here about air born EMR or noise from other appliances in the home.

Choosing a well constructed outlet is a most reasonable thing to do to me to assure that a good connection is made. I don't think it is any more complicated than that.

Auditioning different outlets, well, maybe if one really cares to be a pioneer in this particular area, but I suspect it to be an exercise in futility to cleanly associate specific sonic properties to different outlets and can think of many better ways to spend time.

Sometimes you just have to do the research, determine what many prefer, and go with it.

Life's too short to spend it installing, reinstalling and comparing AC plugs
Tvad (Threads | Answers | This Thread)

Ditto. I'll eventually choose an outlet and that'll be it. Auditioning is going too far for me.

here is a bit more explanation of my initial post in this thread.

approximately 4 years ago a local audiophile dealer friend offered to install a few of Oyaide duplex outlets in my system. i had been using the Jena Labs cryo'd outlets. he said he would remove them and charge me nothing if i did not like what they did. i told him it was not something i cared that much about, but what the heck....go ahead.

i had 11 of the Jena Labs outlets; initially my friend installed 3 of the R-1 outlets and WPC-Z cover plates. i used them on my amp, preamp and digital player.

i was not prepared for the degree of improvement in everything.....noise floor, vividness, dynamics, overall clarity. i was floored that simply improving the connection for my power cords could do that.

i had my friend add 2 more of the outlets so i could use them for everything, and still have enough of the Jena's in my system for a valid A/B. over the next 2 weeks approx 10 local audiophile visited for the A/B demo on the Oyaide outlets. 100% were very dumbfounded that there could be that difference.

then i replaced the other Jena's with the Oyaide R-1 and WPC-Z covers.

i was not expecting the change; in fact i was hopeing there would be no change. this was not any sort of placebo effect. the other friends who heard the A/B were quite skeptical.

ya gotta listen with an open mind.

yes; they are spendy. but paying for a gear upgrade to equal improving your power supply performance from these outlets would cost you more.....or maybe would not be attainable in any other way.

I just can't bring myself to sit and listen for any difference. Even after I installed a Hubble hospital grade plug I never paid any attention to whether it made a sonic improvement. So I guess that's a no for me.

Mapman, you're right. No wonder people think negatively of high end audio and audiophiiles.

Foster_9 on some of these forums they say the maestro outlets are a lot better than the porter ports that I'm using right now! The porter ports use to be the best on the market...

Thanks for the posts Lak and others. I saw that Porter Ports thread before; basically every post on the most popular outlets: Porter Ports, Oyaide R1, Tesla Plex, Furutech FTD-20, Maestro, Wattgate 381, Isoclean. There are others too, more than I realized when I started researching. I am tempted to go with the Porter Port just to save money. I have an Acrolink PN-4030 power cord with Oyaide 004 plugs connected to a Purepower APS 1050 which runs my whole system. One Cable guru at AA highly recommends going with the Oyaide R1 because he found it to be work so well with the Acrolink/Oyaide power cord. Still deciding. But the FIM 880 will eventually be replaced.

"Auditioning an outlet" is a pretty funny concept when you think about it, even if there is some sonic signature attached somehow!

From what I have heard on the forums the Maestro outlet is the one to get...

From 2003 but still interesting: http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?raccs&1065488253&openfrom&1&4#1
I have not auditioned the Oyaide R-1 or other most resent outlets.

I like the wattgate more than the oyaide but was unable to discern any diff with a carbon plate

I agree with Lak that the Porter Ports are very good.
I too recommend them highly. (I will be completely honest and state that I have not compared them to any other outlets.)

But when I had my dedicated circuits installed, I had the Porter Ports installed at the same time. The differences in the sonics were incredible. The word "subtle" was not an adjective that could possibly be used to describe the differences, pre- and post- installation.

Good Luck!

IMO: save yourself some big bucks and buy a Porter Port from Albert Porter here on Audiogon. Huge bang for the buck and will do everything you want it to. Since it’s cryoed it will take some break-in time to achieve its best sound but will worth it!
http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?powrdist&1281640367

OK, but I am waiting for the scientific explanation for why they sound different. I honestly have no clue on this one.

I am generally able to understand why most parts sound different and even why power conditioning might make a difference, depending. Outlets elude me though.

Yeh, Timhru when you post in audio forums its easy to set yourself up for playful comments. It's cool. I probably deserve it for the wording I used in my post. Mapman, I think outlets do have sonic attributes depending on the metals used, plating or no plating, cryoed or not etc. (just like power cords). I've been reading all the posts I could find here and at AA, and some of the well-seasoned audio heads at both sites do attribute certain changes in the sonics to the use of various ac outlets.

The heading ot my post should say "Clarity" "Transparency" ... typing too fast.

I think so. I was shocked (funny pun!) to hear the difference my Furutech outlets made.

Do outlets really have well defined sonic attributes?

Are you planning on plugging your speakers directly into the outlet?
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Sorry, could not resist.

you want an Oyaide R-1 ($145) with a WPC-Z ($225) cover plate.

this combo is ridiculously expensive but worth it. i have 13 of them in my system.

i have a box of 11 Jena Labs Cryo'd duplex outlets sitting in my closet (essentailly the same as the FIM) which i'll sell very cheaply.