I keep being reminded of how much power cords mater


I went through a major upgrade a couple years ago. I quickly upgraded my speaker cables and interconnects. But just listened for about a year. Then one by one, in absolutely no hurry adjusted my venue, and USB, power cords… etc. it seems every month I consider and optimize one thing. I know what my system sounds like.

I noticed a couple weeks ago that I still had a Cardas Clear Beyond power cord on my preamp… but that I still had the Transparent Ultra power cord I had purchased for it in my storage room. Hey, I’m 70… my memory was never good… not getting better. Cardas Clear Beyond are good… when you need a little warmth… I do not. I put the Transparent back in… A great shift in the balance, adding detail without loosing the warmth and midrange balance. A very happy and perfect adjustment. (A friend is a real Cardas fan… I had bought as an experiment, and never swithed back).

That got me thinking, what was on my Audio Research Phonostage? I looked. Turns out it was the original Audio Research cord… they are now very heavy copper with 20 amp connectors. So, I took the Cardas Clear Beyond power cord and put it on the phono stage. Wow, what an improvement. Just in case I had not recently tried a stock power cord, this reminded me why one uses high quality cords.

The power cord for my phonostage is definitely not done. I am pretty sure that a Transparent would be better on my system… but I’ll have to try it… or maybe an AudioQuest. So, my odyssey is not over. But each small change ultimately nets a better sounding system.

Looking back at all the increment changes that have mattered in the last few years… the improvements between direct lines, cables, interconnects, power cords, positioning seem to add up to as much improvement as the upgrades to all my components. But the cost of these probably only 15% of the components.

ghdprentice

As much as my brain keeps coming up with reasons why it shouldn’t matter, my experience says, you have to try it. I would love to hear from someone who has tried it. 

Agree.  Of course, the cartridge is really an important component of the turntable.  So if power cords make a difference on other components, why not a turntable also?  

 

@millercarbon I would value your opinion on this subject - have you tried it on a TT?  

Funny you ask, one of my very first mods was remove the black rubber pc from a Basis turntable motor and hard wire a better one. Wasn't sure it would work, and being inexperienced I used a really cheap ($75) power cord, that wasn't even worth trying to sell.

That pc on the turntable motor made about as big a difference as when it was used on amps and stuff. Since then I have done this a couple other times. Most recently was the motor on my Origin Live Sovereign.

This time I decided to use a pc that, while very expensive, had no real market value due to being a prototype. So cutting it down a bit was no big loss, and I was expecting a nice improvement. 

Instead, not so much. Turns out this particular pc was too stiff. Even trimming most of the conductors, even just the few that were left were awfully stiff. I am used to thinking in vibration terms, they had to be transmitting a lot of vibration right into the motor. 

So I tried eliminating this wire for the last few inches, and used the most flexible wire I had in house, cheap ordinary lamp cord, to go from the motor to a IEC connector just a few inches outside the motor pod. The IEC is then isolated on a rig attached to the back of the rack. Now any pc can be used.

Doing it this way finally got me the expected improvement. So the moral of the story, once again, everything matters. PC matters, and isolating the pc matters just as much. 

Incidentally, it's not just the pc. I've upgraded the motor controller power supply as well. Converting from AC to DC battery is huge. Turntables and phono stages are great for this because current demands are low and so something like an ordinary motorcycle battery will run a turntable for days. Connected to a AC charger, something interesting happens. The turntable is then always run off the battery, but can be run with the charger on or off or completely unplugged and disconnected. Guess which one sounds best?

So even when being run off a battery, if connected to AC then ripple or RFI or whatever junk is riding on the AC gets a free ride right across the battery.