Diving into Power... Cable recs for my system and ears....?


Hello All,

 

I have been enjoying a full system upgrade over the past year... the interconnects and digital cables were an eye opener! Now I am bringing my attention to power...

I am currently running my components off a power strip that is 10' long... supposedly designed for audio. All my major components are plugged into this. This power strip is plugged into a wall outlet, which is shared with some lights etc. Also plugged into this power strip is my wifi router. 

 

I have a few questions:

-What is the most important in regards to impact to overall sound if I were to upgrade the power cords? My guess its: 1: Amp.... 2: DAC... 3: Streamer... is that right? Or is it the opposite? 

-Should I have an electrician setup a dedicated outlet to my electrical box, and run my main components off that? Is this worth it? or is there another setup between my electrical box and my components? Or if there is no detectible buzz, should I simply not bother?

-If I should begin looking into power cords as the first upgrade here, what cord would you recommend if I yearn for the following: Extreme startling presence and separation... magic midrange, highs blissful, voice acoustic jazz violin, piano... essentially startling presence as if the instrument is right there... 

I have been enjoying Anticables, and they have a well rated cable in the $300 range which supposedly is as good or better than $1000 cables... but I am open to recommendations...! 

 

Thank you all!

Richard

 

 

 

 

Currently my system (also outlined in my virtual system profile) is as follows:

    • SPEAKERS: Pure Audio Project Duet 15 Horn (Mundorf Silver Gold Oil Cap upgrade and customized crossover w/high pass filter and sweeter meds), Anticable 4.2 Flex Internal wire)
    • STREAMER: Nagra Streamer (Cardas Clear Coaxial)
    • DAC: HoloAudio Spring 2 Level 3 Kitsune edition (Silversmith Fidelium RCA Interconnects)
    • AMP: PrimaLuna Dialogue Premium HP Integrated (RAY TUBES EL34 Reserve power tubes, RADIOTECHNIQUE NOS 12AU7 Gain tubes w/Mullard NOS and Brimar NOS tubes (Anticables 4.2 Flex to speaker)
    • PHONO: Music Hall MMF-9 and McIntosh MP 100 Preamp (Audio-Technica AT160ML MM Cartridge, Anticable 7.3 and Silversmith fidelium Interconnects)
whyrichard

This is my bread and butter. I am a cables and clean power first audiophile. I’m not even going to bother reading any replies from non cable believers. There wouldn’t be as many cable manufacturers as their are, with as many sales as there are, if the only people that were buying them were people that are lying to themselves and don’t mind just simply wasting money on cables. The simple fact is that cables in a high current system are bad. The closer to line level and low voltage the less the signal is degraded. But that doesn’t mean the dac and streamer side of cabling aren’t important. Everyone looks at normal cables as “they work”. They don’t.  You’re just so use to it. But go listen to g a good car system or Bluetooth earbuds and you will hear purity and ambience much better than your high end system. Because they are powered via battery (clean power) and are low voltage rsther than high current. I chased the root cause of this for years. I found cables that I believe to be the closest thing to no cables. But I’ll save that seemingly advertisement name drop for the day I drop my YouTube reviews. 
Aside from cables, you owe it to yourself to get a good power conditioner. The puritan 156 tool over the market a few years ago and is still going strong. Yes the upgraded cable you can bundle with it is worth the upcharge. There is an associated device called the ground master or the city master. The ground master allows you to link all your devices ground together and then exit to a grounding rod you will install in your yard which goes 8feet deep 

why you need clean power and grounding. The power in your house is dirty I guess. I watched a video on how electricity works and still unsure how magnetic waves moving electrons can be “dirty” but it is. Devices around your house send back disruptive signal. The effect the puritan gives you is that your music is cleaner. The ground master affect might be even greater. The reason being is that all your devices use 0 as a starting point. It is the baseline. It uses the ground as the reference so ground should be zero. But in your house it isn’t. Shown in a graph it looks like distortion all over the place. So basically it’s like your devices are getting ADHD instructions on where to go and what to do. The ground master makes your ground zero and you will for the first time hear that your devices are simply working a billion times better. Like you gave your adhd equipment ADEROL. 
the city master is similar device for the ground but is for people that can’t run a separate grounding rod outside their house. They plug the city master into a separate outlet in their house. It is not as effective as the ground master though

It's kind of quaint when people actually write long-winded nonsense posts themselves. Nowadays most people would use AI.

How long you been waiting to write that one?  Probably have it on copy and paste for when you don’t agree with someone.  
whats so nonsense about it? Do tell.  Or is any comment over two sentences too much for you to handle?

But go listen to g a good car system or Bluetooth earbuds and you will hear purity and ambience much better than your high end system. Because they are powered via battery (clean power) and are low voltage rsther than high current. 

Uh, no.  Just…no.  Not even close to being true.  Like not even in the same ballpark. 🙄

Listen to regular music not audiophile music. The ambience and how it transports you to a place and sets the mood is always there. Just a normal thing. One of the reasons most of us love music so much. But audiophile systems always seem to lack this. They’re great at reproducing the fundamentals. But throw in some normal music and they’re always lacking….musicality. Audiophiles are always “what’s the most musical?” This or that. Ways we think to add musicality

more sparkle, sweeter vocals, more bass, more decay, bloom. We don’t need any of that with normal everyday devices to enjoy music. Like ever. 
It’s the freaking cables. They subdue so much.  Change the speed, smear the upper transients and air. When I listen to my car system, I hear more attitude, micro expressions and changes in pitch. But in most audiophile systems the vocal range is just the voice box and no lips. Because it makes the soundstage seem bigger because the highs are smaller in scale and the air in that range is up front so make vocals seem smaller. I dont mean to brag but you can put any song in my system and not only does it image like a high end system but you will also want to actually get up and dance.