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Importance of Power cords feeding Conditioners

I have heard it said that the most important power cord is the one into the distributor block. Well specifically I have heard it said at the Nordost roadshow demos, by the ever young and enthusiastic Lars.

At the recent UK show, he compared an all Red dawn cabled system, with an all Valhalla system. He changed one cable in the red dawn system, an Odin cable into the QB8 block on the red dawn system and sure enough, it sounded better than the all Valhalla system.

My question, if this is true and it seems so to my ears at the demo, that it is, is it equally true for all power conditioners? In particular, I am using a Pure Power APS 1050 regenerator. This is supposed to isolate the system from the mains by regenerating an AC wave form from a battery supply. In theory, this should make it immune to power cords feeding it. I will try some experiments myself, but has anyone got any comments about this? Thanks
david12
plato
1,543 posts
 
I use a Monarchy Audio regenerator on the CD player in my Magnepan system. Recently I tried a swap between 3 different power cords and they all sounded different. The differences may not have been as pronounced as with other components, but I could definitely hear changes and had a clear preference when I was finished. So I believe it's worth playing with if you have a spare AC cord or two.
theo's avatar
theo
2,660 posts
 
The Running Springs comes with (if opted for) a Mongoose Power cord which is modified Cardas Golden Reference power cable. Which I beleive indicates it must be important to start as close to the wal outlet as possible.
I've never tried replacing the Mongoose with a standard power cable but it may be worth a trial.
nsgarch's avatar
nsgarch
2,524 posts
 
Power cords come with a variety of physical attributes, but the single most important "spec" for a power cord is its gauge (AWG = American Wire Gauge) The lower the AWG number, the thicker the conductor. The thicker the conductor (other things being equal) the better the energy transfer.

The two components that generally require the most/best energy transfer capability (AWG = 10 or larger) are amplifiers and high capacity power processors, like your APS. There is one (counter-intuitive) exception and that is DACs. Although their power requirements are low, for some reason, they seem to perform best with 12 AWG or larger PC's. And of course, anything containing digital data circuits (switching, converting, volume control and processing) should have a shielded power cord to help keep it from broadcasting digital RFI into the air. Hopefully the digital component itself has filters to keep it from inserting digital noise ("hash") back into the power line.
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rtn1
535 posts
 
Yes, the power cord feeding the power conditioner is THE most important power cord for the entire system.

The best thing is that all your components plugged into the conditioner will benefit. So, consider spending 2-3x more on the conditioner cord than each component cord.

Not all PCs are designed for high current. So, what sounds great on a CD player may cause restricted dynamics and a collapse in soundstage if used to feed the conditioner.

In terms of thickness, there are pros and cons to a single thick strand vs. multiple thin strands. It would be too hard to generalize, as designs will vary in their success for each approach.

I have no experience with a power regenerator, which is an entirely different concept. But, do experiment.
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