FYI, How to judge interconnects, power cords, speaker cable, etc. Let's share techniques together..

In my experience, clean power is the biggest concern anyway and if we could rely on all manufacturers to do proper filtering and to use proper low-noise power supply schemes, then a lot of these concerns would go away.
In all my designs, I plan for the worst case scenario and assume that the power will be noisy and unstable... I then make my power supply scheme as robust and well filtered as I can.
IMHO good power supply design expenditure pays off more than almost any other design cost...
Cheers

 

Can anyone suggest a power cord to replace the one supplied with an OPPO UDP-205 that would show a noticeable improvement?

 

I agree 100%. I’m not an engineer, but in every scenario where I am dealing with sound and power (home playback, recording studios, church buildings, live music venues, theaters, guitar amps...heck, even my guitar pedal board), how I deal with power, power supplies and making concessions given the moving target that any given power grid may be providing has the biggest effect on the overall sound being produced.

Case in point...as a church AV director, I often have to remind powers that be that the facilities oversight of the overall power requirements of the building will have drastic (both good and bad) consequences on the success of the quality of sound and lighting of a room. Not just from a noise floor perspective but quality of sound as well. Example...our church’s main worship space is a mid century A frame room built in 1960. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints and a lack of facilities oversight for a few years, the main electrical panel got “grandfathered” for a number of years. As the sound system grew and the lighting and HVAC needs of the building expanded gradually over time, the panel and even the quality of power coming in the building became inadequate and stressed to the point of upon inspection, it became a fire hazard. So, obviously, upgrading was necessary from a liability standpoint. To redesign the panel to meet current needs, a more robust power grid was installed. Here’s where it got interesting from a sound perspective...

Our system is a permanently installed Bose set up with a Yamaha digital console and Crown power amps. Even given the colored nature of the Bose speakers, we IMMEDIATELY heard a huge difference when we went back on line. We made zero changes to our audio set up and the sound was drastically different, post powe grid upgrade. Better in some ways, but we had to completely revoice the sound system (mostly re EQ and some time delay tweaks) to get it to sound balanced. Low end was way more controlled and extended, mids more “there,” highs more strident. Even the untrained ears could hear the difference. I realized just how much we had been compensating for poor power. I turned the gain on the subwoofer amps down by about 20% and we were able to do less drastic overall EQing of the room and our delay speakers in the back of the room had to have the delay offset kicked up a few milliseconds due to the power amps operating faster.

 

That's amazing that it made such a huge difference but I'm not entirely surprised either... clean power has a huge effect on both analog and digital systems so virtually every device in the chain is going to be affected in some way... very good real world example you gave there!
Cheers

 

I've got 3 of these Power Cables

I also have one that cost five time as much but my recommendation is Signal Cable.

 

One of my methods, when I remember not to get too carried away with the initial wow or duh factor of a change of component of whatever ever type is to focus not on the sound but the music and how engaged or not I am. For me, playing something very simple eg Bert Jansch in mono focuses the mind as there’s no stereo and little Hifi. If the song is enhanced then it may be worth pursuing if not or worse still, ruined, then I tread cautiously, play something more demanding but always something I know how I have previously been effected by musically.

The rest is ‘Hifi’ which in itself is nice but the music engagement or emotional reaction takes priority for me otherwise boredom soon results; the mother of all negatives.

What I always try to remember is that this game is always about balance; and everything effects balance even just moving kit on different shelves, speaker positions etc and that potentially one change deserves another to restore that balance eg a cable change gives too much bass say but a small reposition of the speakers restores the balance and the overall effect is better than the previous setup. It’s all too easy to jump to a conclusion as to the effect of a component change and either buy or dismiss it before fully exploring its full potential or lack there of , though this certainly takes far longer to accomplish but ultimately more rewarding and with less money wasted.

 

When my friends and I witness someone who starts spouting what we consider BS, we have learned to ask people to put their money where their mouth is. I would love to see the believers put up their $, bet on their ability to hear differences, and sit down for some controlled tests.

From my experience, when folks try out a tweak that they believe will improve sound, they get excited, and turn the volume up above where it was before the tweak. Then, Fletcher-Munson takes over.

 

There actually is something you can do to power that matters, but as far as I can tell nobody other than pros use it - balanced power. Rather than a 120 hot, a neutral and a safety ground, balanced power is two 60 volt hots and a neutral.

Here's an article by the late, great Roger Nichols:

Roger Nichols: Across The Board |

From the article:

I have been using balanced power for about 10 years. I have had fewer digital errors when transferring signals between equipment. Electrical AES and S/PDIF work as well as optical now. On the analogue side, my transformerless tube mic preamp is 15dB quieter. As an average, all analogue equipment has measured 12 to 16 dB quieter just because of the balanced power.

A few weeks ago I had to record some piano and vocal overdubs at a studio that does not use balanced power. On the piano I was using a pair of Sony C800-G microphones (the ones with the heat sink). On the vocal I was using an Audio-Technica 4060 tube mic. Under normal circumstances, the electrical noise floor at the studio left something to be desired. I was about to change all of that.

I brought a balanced power transformer with me to the session. I fed the outputs of the microphones into the mic inputs of the Apogee A-D converter. The microphone power supplies and the Apogees were powered by the balanced power. I then fed the digital signal from the Apogees directly to the digital input of the Sony 48-track digital machine. Since the signal was digital before it got to the studio's power environment, the signals stayed 'balanced power' quiet.

The difference was amazing! I could finally hear what fantastic microphones sound like. When referenced to a quiet ground, even the low-level noise that you usually associate with tube microphones was gone. I couldn't even tell if the microphones were turned on until someone walked into the overdub room. This is the way recording was meant to be. No matter what I plugged in, no matter how I interconnected the audio, I could not force a ground-related hum or buzz. This was always a problem in the past when someone wanted to bring in their own piece of audio gear to patch into the chain. Now I encourage it.

I expect every studio I work in from now on to be powered by balanced AC. The units come in various power-output configurations and multiple units can be run in parallel. This is by far the least expensive way to rocket your studio into the digital quiet age. Balanced power has been used in hospitals for 20 years to lower the noise in medical equipment and lessen the possibility of shock from poorly grounded equipment. It is way past time for every studio and project studio to embrace this technology.
​

12 to 16 db is NOT a subtle difference.

​

Sorry, but audiophile power cords are one of those things that don't matter and cost money, while things that could make real differences are never considered. Like when Wendy Carlos built her studio in New York City, because she know it was an RF sewer, she took the time to enclose the entire studio in a Faraday cage of brass screen, wired to a bunch of grounding rods. The analog console she hand built back in the Seventies all of the sudden had a dramatically lower noise floor.

Another thing pros use that audiophiles have never discovered is word clocks.

 

If you're lucky enough to build your dream listening room, follow studio practices. Ideally, hire someone who has built studios before so they can make isolated walls.

Have the electrician bring over a dedicated subpanel, and make sure you get the good stuff from a dedicated electrical house, not the crap from Home Depot or Lowes. Cutler-Hammer's brown boxes have copper buss bars, not the cheap pot metal ones and those breakers make a much better connection inside the breaker as well. Run every outlet with 12 gauge wire, or even over-spec it to 10 gauge. It's illegal to run too small of a wire for a given amperage circuit breaker but perfectly fine to run too large. Use "hospital grade" outlets and wrap the wire under the screws rather than push in the stripped wire. Use contact enhancer/de-oxidizer on the wires.

And seriously consider a Faraday cage inside the walls. You'll never be able to receive a cell phone call and the WiFi will not work in the room, but this is a feature, not a bug. You need internet connectivity? Use Cat6. Or put all the digital stuff in a closet outside the shield and run analog cables into the room.

 

That didn't take long.

 

As a trained electrical engineer, I'm intrigued by the power cable discussion.

The very first thing that happens in any piece of sound equipment, analog or digital, is a conversion from AC to DC. There's a transformer involved in that conversion. Assuming the source power (which already has traveled through multiple step down transformers and god knows what wiring in the walls) is not noisy or inconsistent for some reason, you are going to get a clean DC voltage and current in your system.

The number one thing I have observed cause problems with any precision electric powered equipment (not just music equipment) is bad grounding across devices in a chain. If you don't have a rock solid connection to ground, or if the outlet doesn't correctly tie neutral to ground, you will get current loops that cause all sorts of problems. Further, if everything in your chain of equipment is not grounded strongly together, (plugged into the wall in different places) that is another way current loops can form.

It may be that better power cables use better ground wires, and that's what makes a difference.

When I worked in a lab with really high precision electronics, I used to connect all my devices together with a thick metal strap screwed into the chassis of each device. It made an enormous difference to keep the circuits noise free.

I would imagine the same holds true for studio equipment. Run everything off the same supply, consider running thick gauge wire from device to device, attached via a screw in a part of the metal chassis.

96 DB down, this stuff matters.

 

I'd be interested in your take on the Roger Nichols article I posted. He was writing about his experience in a 240 volt/50 hz country, but the results are the same in a 120/60 one.

 

Equi=Tech makes huge balanced power transformers large enough for all the equipment in your listening room. Their stuff is very well built and is all based on solid electrical engineering.

Here's a review of an Equi=Tech system by an audiophile:

6moons audio reviews: Equi=Tech 10WQ

 

So would a toaster or microwave perform better if you changed the power cable etc??

 

I tried the double Y thing with power cords to play mono records but it didn’t work as expected.

 

Balanced signals are a legitimate way to reduce noise... I use balanced wherever my signals are vulnerable to any kind of noise... in a nutshell the theory is that noise on the positive trace is cancelled by the same noise on the negative trace... I've never dealt with balanced AC but I can believe that it has its own merits for sure...

 

This is a great post. Every little thing multiples by every other little thing to create noise. I hadn't considered the cage - it wasnt necessary back in the 80's - but I think this is a very good idea to keep things quiet. I wonder some days if we should be wearing cages around our heads

 

By removing neutral from ground, are you not creating an electric shock risk?

 

The problem in my experience is when the AC to DC conversion is done cheaply and also when the DC is boosted or bucked to all the other parts in the design... if any of those stages are noisy and that noise is allowed to move through the system without proper filtering it will definitely affect the signals...
Cheers

 

There should be margin built into the transformer to deal with different quality input signals. Also if the transformer is defective and putting excessive noise on to your internal DC signals then even a milion dollar power cord won't improve anything.

 

+ bad contact at either or both ends of the AC cable.

 

Read the long audiophile review. The person he consulted with from Equi=Tech actually wrote the portion of the national electrical code dealing with balanced power. The simple answer is a 60 volt shock is a lot less life-threatening than 120 volt one. It's a hundred and twenty volts from...well, it's not really hot and neutral, let's just refer to them by the standard wiring. It's 120 volts between white and black. But it's 0 volts between white and green, and 0 volts between black and green.

 

I'm not sure if you know the name Roger Nichols, but he was the guy who engineered all those amazing sounding Steely Dan albums. If Roger Nichols says it's a 12 to 16 decibel improvement in the noise floor, I'm inclined to believe him.

 

Not sure if it has been mentioned yet on this thread but have a look at the DIY homebrew cables on this site.

I have build a few of them and never looked back to the stock or other manufacturers cables.

Audio cables, parts, and tweaks for audiophiles - VH Audio