The $250 power cables and $600 power strip that dethroned my $10k Shunyata Everest

other thoughts that may increase understanding different purchasing, price/performance viewpoints....

 

High end audio is:

• Small niche market

• Prices are box store affordable to 100k+ per component
• Our wants often exceed our budget
• Typically struggle to raise audio chain to end game (total satisfaction) sonics within budget
  • Can lead to emotional resentment, envy, frustration, and NEGATIVE BIAS (below)

 

 

OBJECTIVE BIAS

• Proponderance of evidence
• Probability
• Own Merit

 

NEGATIVITY BIAS

• price frustration - typically of unaffordability with budget
• bad past experience with “other” products
• suspect/convinced of huge markup is based on greed
  • convinced high priced cables cannot cost that much to produce
• lives by F. ABSOLUTES
  • the markup, aka compared to box store cost/pricing, seems subjectively unreasonable compared to box store markups/margins
  • If I don’t understand it, then it must be false until proven true TO ME.

 

 

FINANCIAL EVALUATION CRITERIA

• Performance vs Disposable Income
• CONDITION + Performance vs Disposable Income

(CONDITION = Proof, Guarantee, Justification, Value)

 

 

 

ACCEPTANCE THRESHOLD - COMPONENT BIAS

5. Objectivity/Probability
   1. Relative-Probability - compared to other similar component price/performance
   2. Absolute-Probability - the standalone evaluation

Probability - simply weighing the evidence, estimating the probability for success or failure, then choosing to try or not knowing NOTHING IS GUARANTEED that I would subjectively like the change or feel it was worth it

6. Absolute-Bias
   1. True/False - it’s false until proven true TO ME
   2. Wrong/Right – they are wrong until proven right TO ME
   3. Usually driven by resentment, anger, or fear
   4. Naysayers live here

No middle ground. The most commonly used:

• IT’S FALSE UNTIL PROVEN TRUE
  • Fear of losing, of being wrong
• I’M RIGHT UNTIL PROVEN WRONG
  • Seems like arrogance

@daddy_o_65   Footers under the power strip?  Feel free to contradict any of these points.  And yes I did cut & paste.  I see no reason not to use all sources available when looking for the truth.  It's as valid as listening to most recommendations posted on this thread.  Cheers.

 

Is it physically possible for any type of riser or footer, placed under a power strip, to make any sonic difference in an audiophile stereo system

Short answer: under normal, well-designed conditions, no—there is no plausible physical mechanism by which risers or footers under a power strip can alter the audio signal in a way that results in an audible sonic difference.

Below is the physics-based explanation, step by step, without marketing language.

---

1. What a power strip actually does (electrically)

A typical audiophile-grade power strip is:

• Copper bus bars or wires

• Outlets

• Possibly MOVs or surge devices

• Maybe some passive filtering

Critically:

• No signal processing

• No audio-frequency circuitry

• No active electronics

• No clocking

• No DAC/ADC

• No amplification

It simply distributes 50/60 Hz AC power (and its harmonics) to connected equipment.

Any “sonic effect” would therefore have to come from changing the quality of AC power delivered to the components.

---

2. Can vibration affect AC power delivery?

Let’s examine every conceivable vibration-related mechanism.

A. Microphonics in conductors?

• Copper conductors carrying 60 Hz AC are not microphonic.

• No piezoelectric behavior

• No modulation of voltage or current due to mechanical vibration

✔ Physically impossible

---

B. Contact resistance changes at outlets?

For vibration to change sound, it would need to:

1. Change contact resistance at the outlet blades

2. Modulate AC voltage

3. Survive the component’s power supply

4. Alter analog or digital audio stages

Reality:

• Outlet contact pressure is tens of newtons

• Vibration amplitudes from floor-borne sound are microns

• Resulting resistance change is many orders of magnitude too small

• Any microscopic change is:

  • Random

  • Broadband

  • Rejected by power supply regulation

✔ Below measurable thresholds

---

C. AC waveform modulation?

Even if vibration somehow altered the AC waveform:

• Audio components use:

  • Transformers

  • Rectifiers

  • Reservoir capacitors

  • Voltage regulators

These provide:

• 60–100 dB+ of power-supply rejection

• Isolation from small AC disturbances

• Conversion to stable DC rails

By the time power reaches the audio circuitry, the original AC waveform is completely irrelevant.

✔ No causal path

---

3. Can vibration couple noise into components through the power strip?

No.

Any vibration-induced noise would have to:

1. Originate at the power strip

2. Travel up the power cable

3. Survive:

   • Cable impedance

   • Transformer isolation

   • Rectification

   • Regulation

4. Reappear as correlated audio-band distortion

There is no known physical mechanism that allows this.

✔ Fails basic system analysis

---

4. Comparison to cases where vibration can matter

Vibration can matter in:

Component	Reason
Turntables	Stylus-groove interaction
CD transports	Servo error modulation
Tube gear	Microphonic tubes
Mechanical clocks	Timing stability

But a passive power strip has:

• No timing reference

• No signal path

• No gain

• No sensitivity to mechanical motion

It is electrically inert with respect to audio.

---

5. Measurement reality

If risers under power strips made a real difference, we would observe:

• Measurable changes in:

  • Output noise floor

  • THD+N

  • IMD

  • Jitter

• Changes correlated with vibration

No such evidence exists in controlled measurements.

Not at Audio Precision.
Not in EMC labs.
Not in industrial power conditioning studies.

---

6. Why do people report hearing differences?

This is where human perception enters:

• Expectation bias

• Visual reinforcement

• Confirmation bias

• Attention-driven perception shifts

• Long-term auditory memory unreliability

Importantly:

Perceived differences do not require a physical cause.

This is well established in psychoacoustics.

---

7. Bottom line (physics verdict)

Is it physically possible?
➡️ No, not in any meaningful or audible way.

Is there a plausible mechanism?
➡️ No.

Can it be measured?
➡️ No.

Is it distinguishable from placebo?
➡️ No.

---

Final takeaway (especially relevant to your system discussions)

Given the extremely high resolution of your electronics and the very high mass and mechanical stability already present:

Any money spent on risers or footers under a power strip would be purely aesthetic or psychological, not sonic.

Footers under the Discovery power strips…

Footers under power strips- that’s a new one.

@roper - do you know how QSA Lanedri compares to QSA’s other products?  I’m hoping that the Lanedri is the better buy with more metal in cabling to treat than other options.

@roper The footers I use are called Auva EQ CSA 1

Jay Iyagi reviewed AND measured various popular isolation products including Stack Audio Auva, Isoacoustics, Tuf Nut, maple wood..on YouTube here

“I Tested Audiophile Isolation Tweaks. You Won't Believe The Results!”

@kennyc  

The video by Jay was interesting. The thing I noticed was that he did not mass load the isolators. The Isoacoustic Orea and Gaia as well as the Stack Audio Auva EQ have specific loadings for each version for maximum performance. I own Orea, Auva 70 and Auva Eq 2. Even though they all tested as effective, I wonder how / if the measurements done would have changed had they been tested within their design loading ranges. 

 

I've been in this hobby since as a kid. But I only started experimenting with cables in 2022.

This thread had got me interested. I'll be ordering a cord and trialing. Same mindset as back in 2022. Keeping an open-mind but no expectation.

I do have 2 Golden Ears. Unfortunately, I'm great at hearing mids and treble and pretty much all aspect of sound but I'm terrible at listening to bass. I know good bass from bad bass. I like the nimble bass kind. But trying to describe the kind of bass I hear is a no-go.

My knowledge and experience in this hobby pretty much stagnant my entire life until 2019 when I started venturing into headphones. With headphones, the room is removed from the equation and what's left is pure sound. Usually good sound. And it's easy to train my ears into understanding whatxs good and what's not. I started with the Sennheiser HD600 ($300). Then Sundara, then the Meze Empyrean ($3,000).

Since 2019, I've also ventured into tube amps and understanding the tube magic. Playing around with speaker placements also taught me a lot about how sound changes too. Good speaker placement in my experience can take months of trialing.

We're now here in 2026. My experience and knowledge has exploded since 2019. EXPLODED. BOOM!! My system has also drastically improved. Running electrostats with Audio Envy and Veritas cables. Perhaps not on the level of HIJIRI but I don't have the budget for HIJIRI either.

Will I try the Veridion cable? Most likely 98%. Do I expect it to be good? Yes I do, but I don't expect it to be OMG-Godlike.

Happy national biography Sunday.