Brave man, McGowan...

Just purchased an incredible $10K power amp. It brought my whole system to life - a huge deep stage, with detail, texture and timber I could never have imagined. WOW! just replaced my old ICs! The new $5K ICs make such an improvement on my $10K amp; I can’t hardly believe how much better it sounds. WOW! I just added an end all $10K power re-generator to my system - I can’t believe how bad all that terrible grid power was making my system sound. WOW!! You’ll never believe how much better my system sounds after adding a $10K power cable to my $10K power re-generator. Just when I thought my system couldn’t possibly sound any better, I put a new supper-dupper carbon fiber (coated with Graphene) cover over my $500.00 audiophile outlet. It was like removing a vail.
All satire of course, but in some cases - more fact than fiction. You can see how ridicules this all may sound too some.......Jim

That’s why it’s fun to spend 10-15 USD on those little tweaks like cheap sorbothane feet for the amp instead of standard ones, or carbon pads for speaker stands instead of aluminium+felt ones. Those can make significant and quite improvements but you didn’t spend a fortune or it, and you can really hear every cent invested paid off immediately.

I want to add a few comments. Anyone who says that " McGowan’s products are way overrated POS!" is either ignorant or has an ax to grind.I have been a strong proponent of their power regenerators since the days of the premier power plant. Have owned the PPP, the P5, P10,P15, and now the P20. They make a huge difference and everyone i know who uses them agrees with me. I have a friend who read Paul’s post about the power cords and was using a Pangea cord for the 20 amp connection. He purchased a Audioquest Thunder power cord which is way less $$ than the Dragon, and he found it to make a nice difference over the Pangea. It does not make sense and even Paul, from his comments, does not understand it, but these things do matter. I admire his courage for throwing that out there. He has a very high level of integrity and does not act from a place of greed or manipulation.

Here where I am locally there’s no much experience with P5-20 line, only one guy who praises his P5. However with previous PPP there was much experience and opinions varied. Many have claimed it made the sound actually worse (weaker dynamics, for example). As for Paul, he may be a nice guy in person and he certainly looks and sounds like he really is, however, when it comes to business he’s just the same: he mentions strengths of his designs, keeps silent about weaknesses which he will care to mention only when comparing to something better he has to sell. So with all that stuff it’s usually ’we improved something but we also made something worse on the way, however we won’t tell you what got worse since we need to sell, you get to figure this out yourself’.

Anyway, I agree that Paul’s admitting that an expensive AC wire made a huge improvement on his best power plant design tells much about the imperfection of this design, but also about the failure of this design’s primary goal: which was to re-make the AC and make it pure. If AC wire for its input power makes a huge difference there’s no way this goal was ever met. It still doesn’t mean it’s POS, but its marketing certainly is.

@zalive I agree with the effectiveness of using affordable, readily available products and methods to achieve some very effective tweaks, Having been professionally involved in the industrial tech. industry, dealing with the effects of vibration, resonance and harmonics, I know these can be troubling issues, but solutions, particularly in audio, shouldn’t cost thousands of dollars.

Regarding the $10K power re-generator that needs a $10K power cord to really be effective at making a $10K power amp sound great - I’d say "Man you’d have to live in an area with some real sh*t power or just made a real bad choice in amps".....Jim

I’m a believer in spending a reasonable amount on cables but it needs to be relative to the cost of the equipment being fed. Otherwise, as the old cowboys say “you just put a $100 saddle on a $10 horse”

Anyway, I agree that Paul’s admitting that an expensive AC wire made a huge improvement on his best power plant design tells much about the imperfection of this design, but also about the failure of this design’s primary goal: which was to re-make the AC and make it pure. If AC wire for its input power makes a huge difference there’s no way this goal was ever met. It still doesn’t mean it’s POS, but its marketing certainly is.

I think it might be his polite way of showing that he does not know everything, you don’t know everything, I don’t know everything and..most importantly...


The oiler crowd and the naysyer crowd, really need to crack their head open and admit they don’t know everything and to stop attacking things they don’t understand. To embrace the reality that the world is full of unknowns.

To understand how science works.. and not attack everyone with ’facts’. As facts are for engineering and this is exploration, the realm of science, which has no facts, only theory. The word fact is a common misconception of the nature of reality and has no place in science. (go ask the entire professorial staff at any university physics department)

That the word fact can be bandied about and utilized, but with the fully realized and consciously carried deeper understanding that it is more an idealization of a deeply entrenched and seldom unpacked theoretical set of points or point...that is seldom wrong or seldom found to be incorrect, or not yet found to be wanting. A fact is nothing more than this.

Where empirical observation is not to be dismissed. As that is core to the very idea of science.. The two are inseparable.

But this highly desirable outcomes is not likely to happen any time soon, for some very basic reasons.

This sort of thing (fervent requests to have people open their minds, etc) has been said by others a thousand times over, and maybe some do finally get it..but... others seem to step into their space left open and continue the very sorry attack fest.

It is so bad, So rampant, so common...that the very idea of engineering was created as a system of formalized study to deal with such linear thinking mindsets (’fact’ oriented minds) - by the Germans, back in the early 1700’s.