Power Conditioner vs A/C cables

A question with a bazillion possible responses.

Simple approach is buy and try. I use AC regen and aftermarket cable on everything.

Thread subject is one that can go south quick.

I've not found power cables that useful, except to get shielded cables, which can be had relatively inexpensively.


Shielded cables can prevent your digital devices or other noise sources from reintroducing noise your conditioner removed.  This comes up so often I wrote about it in my blog, including links to inexpensive shielded cables:


https://inatinear.blogspot.com/2019/04/power-management-for-frugal-audiophiles.html

If you have a neurotic fixation on power cords just get some $90 Pangeas from AA. I assure you they are excellent and very well made. Cost-effective and will not degrade the sound quality of any component! I'd worry about what's coming out of your power supplies - not what is coming out of the wall outlets!

Both. One does not negate the need for the other. Very clear and easy to hear.

Ted Denney Lead designer, Synergistic Research Inc.

A good power cable before and after power conditioning, has alway deliver better sound for me.

Same experience here as @68pete relates..

I've had difficulty hearing much difference between power cords. (Not so with interconnects, speaker cable). But when I bought an Audioquest Niagara 1200 conditioner, the difference was pretty obvious. Actually took me a while to adjust to the noise not being there anymore.

Power management is very site dependent. Depending on the power grid you are on, what your house is like... lots of noisy things in your house.
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I wouldn’t look at it as if a power cord is going to make things worst... I would look at it as how much improvement will it give you.
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A good plan is to borrow power cords on line or from dealer and experiment. If a power conditioner makes a big difference power cords all around are likely to have a big effect.
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We have all buried power lines in our neighborhood, so the power is pretty good. Power management still makes a difference. All that said, no question listening is best Sunday nights at midnight... showing me, I need to pay more attention to power... Damn... this post is going to cost me.
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This is actually why I read and post in the forums. Writing about what I have learned frequently has me put together some observations I had not previously assembled to form a conclusion. In this case I am sure it is going to cost me at least $10K. But I am also sure it will be worth it.

I've had systems that as I added AFTER a good conditioner and master coupler, the system got noisier. AGAIN a buddy and his BIG ol Power cables weren't shielded properly and just screwed the whole system up..

I swap the PCs out for the right kind of cable, everything else became kind of secondary.. I was 45 years old then, I'm 66 now..

Another thing I've noticed in other's systems they use a PC that are WAY to big for the application..  Bigger is actually worse in some applications..

I've notice where it's being used makes a difference AND the quality of the power supply in the piece of gear.

Crap power supplies benefit more from a BETTER construction (filtering) than (for example) a Mac..

DAC, routers, Laptops (not so much),

Phono Stage, Pre Amp, Streamer/Server, Power Amps BIG TIME..

Reel to Reel is still in ? stage for me, cabling is a mystery vs quality..

I just spent two great day in the Barrios listing to street music.. No I ain't sayin where...BUT it wasn't in the US WOW... I never ate so much good food and seen so many masked beauties.. Fantasyland!!!

I never saw anything BUT heavy copper. Serious tight a$$ jammin' going on.. Electrical tape everywhere, chain hook the cable drop it on the gravel.. Good music.. mercy..

Regards

I decided I need power conditioner with filtering and strong overvoltage protection anyway.  I bought Furman Elite 20PFi and placed it on the shelf below DAC and amp.  I concluded, that if power cables have effect on sound, it will be proportional to the length of the cable.  I built very short (1.5ft) shielded cables using Belden 83803 and Wattgate connectors.  

I believe that good power filters are very useful. Both to filter your AC, and to block digital noise from the digital/switching power supply components (computers, TVs, other). This means a mains filter AND a 2nd one, can be fairly simple, just for the digial /switching stuff.
Power cords i have tested many times and fail to find an value, unless you are replacing something deficient- which is not all that uncommon, but easily avoidable for $20

A power condition that generates its own pure sine wave output is worthwhile to completely remove line noise.

Shielded power cables stop Electromagnetic Interference emanating from the cables. Certainly EMI is present in the environment, but it is still important not to add more in close proximity of equipment.

If you are really serious, both are crucial!

Power ‘filters’ are terrible, they normally take more away than help the sq. You want a power regenerator or use balanced power to get the best out of your system.
How much to spend or how much improvement you are going to hear all depends on the quality of your system and your hearing. To actually state the a $20 cable is all you need is foolish for example, even a pioneer system would probably see an improvement with a $20 cable. A dealer friend did a demo for me on a system that cost around $20k. He made 1 change that I couldn’t see what he did and it made a huge difference in sq. All he did was to replace the stock power cord on the Mcintosh amp to an entry level red dawn nordost power cable. This was almost 20 years ago and ever since, I have always used the better power cords on all my components, which have been much more expensive than the red dawn

Ralph, at Atma-Sphere has one of the best Power conditioners you can obtain at the moment. Elgar Units that were made many years back still are much better than anything made today. It a proper Labtory Power condition using the fastest response time.

Watched a video today on power conditioners and regenerators and it seems lots of people overlook DC effects on their power. There’s more gear than not out there that doesn’t properly address it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qGPq5vr04M

All the best,
Nonoise

Ted dennehy, do you use OCC single crystal wire? And if you're just using ofc then your wire is behind the times because it's been proven for 40 years now that OCC single crystal is far superior to anything ofc.

Ted dennehy you charge $10,000 for a power cord LOL LOL talk about a rip off. There's nothing you can do to a cable with OFC wire in it to make it worth $10,000 give your head a shake.

Everything depends on money and your priorities.  I have always used after market power cables on everything.  They are definitely not my 1st priority.  After components, IC's make significant difference, followed by good isolation tweaks to help clean up everything, at that point, I begin auditioning different power cables and their various grades before purchasing.  They do make a difference and influence system quality.

“Is it necessary to buy expensive power cables downstream of a high-end power conditioner?”

Neccessary - no

Preferred - maybe 

It's a matter of personal preferences and ability.
Some people for whatever reason don't hear a difference while using after-market power cords, others do hear a difference. Just depends on which side of the fence you're on?

@phantom_av,

I purchased an Elgar power conditioner many years from a military surplus sale for about 40 dollars. I used it with Carver and Soundcraftsman amps. 
It was heavy and at the time we were moving, so I gave it to my best friend. I don’t recall the model. I don’t think I appreciated the sound enhancement it provided during the time I owned it. 

I'm with ghdprentice. If all critical listening could be done late Sunday nights, regeneration and fancy power cords would hardly be an issue. 

note on some comments above.  IMO the gold standard for a real, practical power conditioner is an industrial isolation transformer.  if oyu get one in the 2 kilowatt range, it will deliver plenty of transient power capability, will eliminate and DC component, filter out HF noise and reduce/eliminate ground noise.  Yes some series filtering is also helpful - i do it.
I would in fact argue against buying these form high end firms and get ones that meet medical requirements.  Just like I did.  The put another filter between your analog components and the dirty switch mode power supply stuff, bane of our AC lives.  Thes put noise "backward"to the grid and the rest of your house.

You need both you will be amazed when you get the match right to each component in your system it is like buying a whole new system.

I use AC regenerator and aftermarket cables from a guy on this site (acoustic bbq) and both made a difference. The regenerator made an enormous difference though.

I would in fact argue against buying these form high end firms and get ones that meet medical requirements.

I fully agree. As far as I'm concerned audio equipment is just as sensitive as medical equipment, yet few seem to understand the impact and even fewer manufacturers comprehend how easily a quality sound can be degraded by emissions from internal power supplies. It is crucial internal power supply and rectifiers are shielded from other circuitry or even better housed in external cases.

Since few manufactures provide power supplies in external cases, I take a peek inside and consider how and where I can add shielding with a grounding wire. I've done all my equipment and the results are simply stunning. Perhaps I should say it is shocking I have been able to make such amazing improvements that were overlooked/ignored by manufacturers.

Some even go so far as to put dummy plugs in unused ports to eliminate the possibility of proving a direct antenna path to circuitry.

Which I have done, and also gone one step further by putting a stainless-steel gauze used for protection against high frequency radiation and low frequency electric fields over ventilation holes. The one I used is made of thin wire that makes very little impact to air flow.

While phono levels are the most sensitive to contamination, so too are CD/Blu-ray readers, and indeed everything all the way up to and including speaker cables. Yeah, I know you're going to add capacitance, but I believe the benefit absolutely outweighs any negative, particularly when you use quality speaker cable and keep the two wires separated rather than encased.

A question. Some big IBM mainframes used motor generators to create juice of different voltage, phase and frequency. 
Why not an audio motor generator? All it has to do is create clean 60 Hz, 120+- volts, single phase power. All audio units would be plugged into the generator. The juice would be isolated from vagaries and noise of the electric companies juice. A flywheel would keep the output good if the input faltered a bit. The unit could be fed by a decent UPS for when the grid goes away. Don’t worry about lightning strikes. Any network connection would go through an optical coupler.

True isolated power.

At a certain point in developing your system it ceases to be about what is 'necessary'.

I am a firm believer in the importance of the quality of the power that feeds our components - we start with an extremely small signal and amplify it using that power, so it could be argued that we are listening to that power supply. That's aside from noise and the environment issues in the air and from other components on the same circuit, which includes all the crap wall warts that power items that are not part of our system. Everything on a circuit forms part of that circuit.

I use an Ansuz Mainz8 C2 distributor and the difference it made to the sound quality was significant. I use matching power cables to the distributor from the wall and to my speakers (active, so I am talking about power cables to the amplification).

I will get another power cable for the wall to distributor connection (tempted to try Sablon Audio as I'd like to use a D2 to the distributor but that's a price that I'm not quite comfortable with) and then use the existing C2 power cable for my DAC. The DAVE seems quite sensitive to power quality and using a decent power cable to it provided a noticeable improvement. Or I might get a Sean Jacobs DC4 instead. I was quite surprised at the difference the power cable made to the DAVE. It seemed to make no difference to my streamer though, so I'll leave that with a standard power cable.

In my experience, quality power is the foundation of getting the best possible sound from your system.

But, to answer your question... no, it's not 'necessary'. 

Elgar 3006B is a massive PC, Ralph has one you should contact him.

Some big IBM mainframes used motor generators.

Motor Generators? 

You mean a Gen Set? A generator with an Engine?

That is the absolute dirtiest source you can have. Nasa has a few clean runners.. BIG cat gen sets.. BUT they are made for power not clean power, none I've worked on anyway.. I was in charge of 3 CAT genset in Vegas at CES in 2003 and 5. The smart vendors figured it out QUICK.

People were putting their fingers in their ears, dirty power.. The casinos didn't have the juice, it was even WORSE..

A few Cooled the Power supply and were very successful in spite of it all.. I was at a Florida show .. EAR PLUGS it was so bad.. Hoody and ear plugs, YUP.. Everybody was bitchin'. Crap power, BOILING highs. Just bad. Could not get any of the Florida booths sounding right..

How important is the power supply? It's a "Elvis has left the building" thing for me... 

Regards

Several good YouTubes by Hans that address. Worth your time, imo. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lHPjcXhK4c&t=1s

"Whatever you do, enjoy the music!", HB

AC CABLE UPGRADE FOR SURE 

Up until a couple weeks back, I had an old Shunyata Venom power conditioner that I’ve had for years and never really believed it made much difference. My dealer asked if I’d be willing to help him break in a new Denali 6000S conditioner. All I can say is holy crap...the sq difference was immense out of the box. I’m not dialed in to all the audiophile terminology, but everything was shockingly clearer, the noise floor seemed to disappear, even seemed to add more specificity in placing musicians in the soundstage. Great sales pitch as there’s no way I’ll be able to let this go.

PS Audio offers a line of power generators that suits most budget needs. The after market AC power cords will benefit them because these generators are more like amps than conditioners. I have the P15 and use a AQ power cord and they work great in my system. 

Would it be necessary to use a power conditioner if you use a portable power supply like Eco Delta and the likes? AC noise from your appliances or anything else in your home would be isolated as the unit would only be plugged in to charge. Any ideas?

I suggest you pursue this on Audio Science Review, a site that doesn’t subscribe to witchcraft. Most Audiogon contributors can’t waste enough money on ridiculous accessories touted by unscrupulous dealers.