A 6' 14 AWG at 40 A will have 1.3 V of drop The branch circuit feeding it will have >10 V It is a personal choice but V drop imo is not a factor, I bought 3 JDM Luxman cords for my gear: 1 power 12 AWG, 2 source 14 AWG. I expected no SQ improvement but they are cool
I see measurements for headphones, DACs, cartridges, speakers. I really would like to see measurements from some kind of controlled environment for interconnects, speaker cable, and power cords. I'd still trust my ears, but if there were something to be gained by measurements, I'm pretty sure vendors would tout them.
I cleaned the 3 pin plugs in my rig this week with Brasso, the pins were noticeably tarnished the cloth was black afterwards. Had a good look at all the standard fuses on the market there are quite a few manufacturers, decided to try Sem12 Schneider electric, the end caps look more shiny than some and found a four pack for £1.10 in Wickes. Worth it, yes I think so.
Quick reminder about forum rules. Feel free to present your subjective observations. Feel free to present data and DBT results. Objectivist-subjectivist debate ("My ears are superior to your data" / "Your ears are delusional because science!") is expressly against forum rules.
I might be misinterpreting what you are saying, I apologize if so. I see this in two parts. 1) I could see how one might think existing science or knowledge of electricity is not sufficient if one takes over-broad statements like those in this thread as absolute fact or if one does not have a sufficient level of scientific understanding. If you or anyone else are interested in a bit of self-study, the standard textbooks for electricity and magnetism can be found online. For an undergraduate level of understanding, here is Griffiths: https://hansandcassady.org/David J. Griffiths-Introduction to Electrodynamics-Addison-Wesley (2012).pdf For a graduate level of understanding, here is Jackson: http://www.fisica.ugto.mx/~ggutj/CV/Classical_Electrodynamics_Jackson_1a_Edicion.pdf Once you do the exercises for chapters 1-11 of Griffiths and then chapters 1-9 and chapter 14 and 16 of Jackson, you'll then see that the electrodynamics of the 19th century is all that one needs to be able to predict and describe the scientific differences between power cords. No 19th or 20th century physics or anything more exotic is needed. MIT also has their Electromagnetism courses online to help with the self-study approach, for example (picked from a list with this search Search | MIT OpenCourseWare | Free Online Course Materials ): Electromagnetics | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | MIT OpenCourseWare Advanced Electromagnetism | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | MIT OpenCourseWare Once you are armed with that understanding, you can design some high-speed analog, digital and mixed signal systems as personal projects or as part of a career. Seeing what causes issues and what does not in those systems, then you can start to see when simplifying assumptions like "only the gauge matters" or "signal geometry doesn't matter" or "the dielectric doesn't matter" are valid and when they are invalid. Obviously they are invalid from a theoretical perspective and from an applied perspective when doing RF or digital design that push the envelope, but you will see that they can apply in certain low-speed or simplistic environments. One will then see that people's personal simplifying assumptions do not have sufficient data to be generally valid without caveats. 2) As per above, the physics is well understood. What is still not well understood is what levels of the various parameters turn into which types of audible differences for given particular stereo equipment, program material, listeners, and listening environments. A quest toward understanding thresholds would start gathering data for all the different parameters, only changing one variable at a time and leaving the rest constant. Test equipment for the home has dropped dramatically in price, and there are some nice audio analysis software libraries out there for teasing apart signals that are closer to actual music, so there should be no significant hurdles towards gathering data. One-off data points are not indicative of the entire parameter space.
People keep PM'ing me about this thread. Okay, I'll answer a bit. I don't give too much of a crap about power cords. I have some very expensive ones and I use them in all of my good gear. I got them all gratis. When I compared a Kubala-Sosna "Emotion" power cord with the standard furnished cord that came with my old amp, I noticed a more dynamic bass presentation with the KS cord. So that's something. Increased dynamics can be measured, right? More dynamic range and all that. So, someone go try it. Personally it sounds boring as hell to even ponder working up a test like that but still, dynamic increase should be easily measured. I use the good wire because people who's ears I trust also use it (or make it).
i certainly appreciate the fact that it's difficult to understand and/or measure the impact of power cords on system performance. and i definitely don't want to spend money on expensive power cords -- it's just not very satisfying relative to buying speakers or electronics. my experience is that cables (all types) do make a difference, but they make the least amount of impact assuming they have some level of decent engineering (read mogami, canare, etc.). last week i tried a audioquest hurricane high current cable (big bucks) at the insistence of my local dealer. he said to try it out on my dac. i compared it to another expensive audioquest cable and the three power cables offered by signal cable (silver resolution, digital reference, magicpower cord). i'm a fan of signal cable and use their speaker cable, interconnects, and power cords. i compared the five cables on my dac -- it was easy to switch them out quickly to "a/b" them (obviously not blind). the hurricane cable came out on top -- the soundstage became more defined, imaging was more precise, and the texture of voices was more natural. second was the signal cable silver resolution -- it did everything almost as well is the hurricane but most notably the texture of voices had more grain to them. the other cables just weren't as good -- they seemed to suck out the energy and dimension from the music to varied degrees. so yes, i didn't want to hear the difference that the hurricane made, but it was there -- and it was very good. no, it wasn't earth shattering, but it certainly could be the icing on the cake in the right systems.
1st off to naysayers: please don't respond if you haven't listened with your ears and are just speaking from theories/charts/measurements. I don't care about I doubt $80/pair is going to be perceivable, I didn't hear difference with the $350 Audioquest NRG-Z3 power cord, but I do hear a difference (and improvement) with a $500 iFi Silent SupaNova. Yes, if your system is resolving enough and your ears are good. You can't just change 1 thing (e.g., power cable) and expect to hear an improvement; you gotta upgrade several things. In plain English: you can't take a shower and put on the same dirty underwear! I recently upgraded to the ifi Silent SupaNova power cable with noise-cancelling and wow. Here's my video: I would say upgrade the following first before power cables: - lossless streaming source such as Apple Music (don't use compressed Spotify!) - speakers: GoldenEar BRX (amt tweeters) - subwoofers: 2 identical sealed subwoofers - preamplifier: Parasound 2100 - amplifier: Parasound 2125v2 - DDC: Denafrips Iris 12th - DAC: Denafrips Pontus II 12th-1 - streamer: Eversolo DMP-A6 - upgraded the power supply for the Eversolo DMP-A6 to a linear power supply - Interconnect: Cardas Clear USB cable - Interconnect: RCA cables using Mogami 2549 wire and Neutrik connector. - network switches: quiet one such as Netgear GS108E v3 or upgrade to an iFi PowerX power supply
