Audio Power Cables / Cords - Do they really make a difference?

[KurtBJC]

Kurt,

Great article! I would be interested to hear your opinion on power conditioners and re-generators considering the perspectives in your article.

Are they something you consider un-necessary with money better spent on quality sources/amps with better designed power supplies? Are there any significant benefits to paying for that perfect 110 input sine wave?

Thanks,
-Brian

That's definitely a more complicated topic than power cords...but I can give you a few thoughts on it here.

First, most of us in the USA have pretty good power, and well-designed power supplies will not have a lot of hiccups on it. Most of the time, hiccups are all we're really worried about, and for most of us, they just aren't exactly economically significant.

A mile down the road from our shop, my older brother does video tape dubbing work. He has a huge, and very expensive, power conditioner there because once upon a time mass VHS dubbing was a big part of his business and if there's a momentary hiccup in the power when you're in the middle of playing back a video tape you'll get a visible artifact of that hiccup--a dropout, for example. Now, if I'm watching TV in my living room and a hiccup causes a small dropout on my screen, that's no big deal. If, on the other hand, I was just dubbing 300 tapes simultaneously and there's a small dropout, I've got to go back and start all over again. I think that most of us, not being in the business of producing professional video, don't really mind if there's a little pop, squeak or dropout once in a great while, and a surge suppressor is really all we need unless we're prepared to get really obsessed with perfect, 100%-of-the-time video.

Not everybody has "pretty good power," though. My sister lived in Ketchikan in the 1970s when the power was pretty dodgy (don't know what it's like up there nowadays) and I've known others, especially in rural areas, whose power quality is pretty variable. In a case like that, I'd worry a bit more about the ability of a surge suppressor to deal with the potential for harm to equipment, and that would certainly argue for a good power conditioner.

Now, if you need a power conditioner, what to buy? I would ignore the consumer market completely because all of the units are silly, overpriced, glitzy things which are designed more to make your rack look high-end than to make your power clean. Go to a broadcast supply house (my favorite is our local, Westlake Electronic Supply, but there are many others) and get a professional unit. It'll cost less and work better. Do some research first--they're not all alike, and ideally it'd be good to know just what's the matter with your power so that you know what you're trying to fix.

Kurt
BJC

 

[TLS Guy]

Kurt,

Great article! I would be interested to hear your opinion on power conditioners and re-generators considering the perspectives in your article.

Are they something you consider un-necessary with money better spent on quality sources/amps with better designed power supplies? Are there any significant benefits to paying for that perfect 110 input sine wave?

Thanks,
-Brian

It depends where you live.

However the weather is becoming more violent, with larger longer electrical storms. The power lines go over vast distances, with a lot of catchment area for lightening strikes.

The other issue as home equipment becomes more and more dependent on increasingly complex and therefore frailer micro processing chips. The damage risk rises year by year.

I think an awful lot of the serious failures reported on these forums are weather related.

I consistently recommend whole house surge suppression. This protects not only your AV equipment, but refrigerators, furnace controls etc. These devices are also becoming more complex. It seems they can no longer build a home appliance without a bunch of digital processing.

Next, I really do believe that a smart UPS is required in vast stretches of the USA, to power any equipment using complex digital processors.

These are devices that switch to battery in one to 5 msec when power deviates by more than set parameters. I have mine set to respond at 96 Volts low and 132 volts high.

In the winter there is not a lot of activity from the UPS units. Mostly it occurs with Minkota power switching the ripple heat on and off.

In the summer however, there is a lot of frequent activity, with the UPS units removing the gear from the grid.

So I think these units are well worth the investment probably in most of the USA, certainly the entire Midwest and I suspect a lot of other areas also.

I have the ultimate weapon. If there is a lot of electrical storm activity with lights flickering and UPS units cutting in and out, then I start the generator and go off grid until the storms pass.

When I was building chairman and capital budget chairman of our large medical center, I pursued a vigorous UPS installation program. I cut the failure and downtime of vital complex medical equipment drastically. This resulted in monetary savings and reduced hazard to patients by reducing the chance that vital equipment would not be available.

So yes, I'm a huge proponent of UPS devices, especially those from APC.

Regenerative devices I do not advise. Apart from being overkill, that add an element if unreliability, generate a lot of heat and waste power.

 

[bforsse]

Thanks for your reply, sorry to de-rail the thread a bit, the issues of fancy power cable and fancy power conditioner go hand in hand in my opinion. I'm a sucker for anything that'll protect and improve the performance of my system. Articles like yours help me pinpoint where the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and also how to identify the snake oil.

That's definitely a more complicated topic than power cords...but I can give you a few thoughts on it here.

First, most of us in the USA have pretty good power, and well-designed power supplies will not have a lot of hiccups on it. Most of the time, hiccups are all we're really worried about, and for most of us, they just aren't exactly economically significant.

A mile down the road from our shop, my older brother does video tape dubbing work. He has a huge, and very expensive, power conditioner there because once upon a time mass VHS dubbing was a big part of his business and if there's a momentary hiccup in the power when you're in the middle of playing back a video tape you'll get a visible artifact of that hiccup--a dropout, for example. Now, if I'm watching TV in my living room and a hiccup causes a small dropout on my screen, that's no big deal. If, on the other hand, I was just dubbing 300 tapes simultaneously and there's a small dropout, I've got to go back and start all over again. I think that most of us, not being in the business of producing professional video, don't really mind if there's a little pop, squeak or dropout once in a great while, and a surge suppressor is really all we need unless we're prepared to get really obsessed with perfect, 100%-of-the-time video.

Not everybody has "pretty good power," though. My sister lived in Ketchikan in the 1970s when the power was pretty dodgy (don't know what it's like up there nowadays) and I've known others, especially in rural areas, whose power quality is pretty variable. In a case like that, I'd worry a bit more about the ability of a surge suppressor to deal with the potential for harm to equipment, and that would certainly argue for a good power conditioner.

Now, if you need a power conditioner, what to buy? I would ignore the consumer market completely because all of the units are silly, overpriced, glitzy things which are designed more to make your rack look high-end than to make your power clean. Go to a broadcast supply house (my favorite is our local, Westlake Electronic Supply, but there are many others) and get a professional unit. It'll cost less and work better. Do some research first--they're not all alike, and ideally it'd be good to know just what's the matter with your power so that you know what you're trying to fix.

Kurt
BJC

 

[jinjuku]

Kurt,

Great article! I would be interested to hear your opinion on power conditioners and re-generators considering the perspectives in your article.

Are they something you consider un-necessary with money better spent on quality sources/amps with better designed power supplies? Are there any significant benefits to paying for that perfect 110 input sine wave?

Thanks,
-Brian

When it comes to amplification you need to look at what is exiting the rectification stage after Xformer and the capacitor bank... If that's cleaned/conditioned... Than a power conditioner isn't going do anything for it in 'normal' operation modes. That is the utility power isn't compromised.



Now that's a power cord...

 

[FirstReflection]

I share the exact same opinion as TLS Guy.

I'm strongly in favor of having a UPS battery backup in every home theater setup. And, like TLS Guy, I'm a big fan of the products offered by APC for that purpose.

I'd like to add to what TLS Guy already said on the matter:

Outside of the protection, it's simply fantastic to be able to keep running your home theater gear for at least a few minutes or longer.

In the case of anyone with a front projector or a rear projection TV that uses a lamp, it's very important to keep the cooling fan for that lamp operational. Power outages might be infrequent, but almost everyone will experience a power outage at some point. When it happens, suddenly losing power can easily cost you the life of your lamp. Having a UPS in the system gives you at least a few minutes to properly shut down the projector and allow it to run through its normal cool down process.

Along with that, most of us now have at least one source that uses a hard drive. Similar to the lamp, it's best if you have at least a few minutes to properly shut down any hard drive so that it can spin down properly and not lose any data.

Now, in my personal opinion, it's well worth having a UPS battery backup that can offer significant run time in the event of a power outage. I say this because most HT enthusiasts now use a DVR. I've had power outages that lasted longer than 30 minutes. And that outage came right in the middle of prime time! I use an APC J15, which offers significant battery life. By shutting down all of my other gear, I'm able to run my DVR off of the battery for over an hour. This has proven invaluable. I was able to keep my DVR running and recording until the power came back on. I didn't lose my recording and that was fantastic!

I'm less inclined to believe that all of the filtering and voltage regulation is vital, although my J15 occassionally kicks in to regulate the voltage in my building, so it's not as though it does absolutely nothing! But the real value is in having that battery backup.

 

[haraldo]

I had a Nikko Aplha III power amp way back that said a big loud BLIPPP! whenever the fridge turned off..... I wonder if superdupertitaniumshielded wondercore superfilter ultragoldcore powercables would help?

No, seriously and obviously in this case the fridge leaves residue back to the power outlet that may even possibly fry the tweeters although it never got that troublesome for me.,..

Not sure if in such conditions it's trouble with fridge or amp.......

Then again... I reckon and hope that these pro-power conditioners that Kurt refers to here will protect against and eliminate issues like this.

 

[TLS Guy]

I had a Nikko Aplha III power amp way back that said a big loud BLIPPP! whenever the fridge turned off..... I wonder if superdupertitaniumshielded wondercore superfilter ultragoldcore powercables would help?

No, seriously and obviously in this case the fridge leaves residue back to the power outlet that may even possibly fry the tweeters although it never got that troublesome for me.,..

Not sure if in such conditions it's trouble with fridge or amp.......

Then again... I reckon and hope that these pro-power conditioners that Kurt refers to here will protect against and eliminate issues like this.

I doubt it. The solution is capping the fridge compressor motor switch. If it was a decent fridge it would be capped to start with.

 

[haraldo]

I doubt it. The solution is capping the fridge compressor motor switch. If it was a decent fridge it would be capped to start with.

I see, thanks...

 

[tattoo_Dan]

so where is a good place to buy replacement upgrade removable power cords ?

(now I have a dedicated 20a outlet with 12ga to the panel.)

the only ones I can find are monster,and it does not state the wire gauge,and well,I don't like buying overpriced mc products.

 

[Nestor]

so where is a good place to buy replacement upgrade removable power cords ?

(now I have a dedicated 20a outlet with 12ga to the panel.)

the only ones I can find are monster,and it does not state the wire gauge,and well,I don't like buying overpriced mc products.

Make your own. Cheap and just as effective.

I should ask, what's wrong with the ones you have now?

 

[tattoo_Dan]

Make your own. Cheap and just as effective.

I should ask, what's wrong with the ones you have now?

I just had new 12ga romex and 20a outlets installed for the ht and I like to tweak things,I have the AV upgrade syndrome and it seems like a fun thing to do,

making them sounds good too !

the power cords for my subs and avr are probably just fine.

 

[haraldo]

This is for you mate

 

[TLS Guy]

I just had new 12ga romex and 20a outlets installed for the ht and I like to tweak things,I have the AV upgrade syndrome and it seems like a fun thing to do,

making them sounds good too !

the power cords for my subs and avr are probably just fine.

Unless the power cables you have are getting warm in use, there is no advantage in changing them.

 

[Alex2507]

so where is a good place to buy replacement upgrade removable power cords ?

These guys seem to have some stuff. It's been a while since I looked at it but remember a discussion sayin' they weren't cheap.

For a regular cable replacement I got some parts at Home Depot to replace a cheesy looking power cord and a short extension cord. The hardest part was getting the strain relief thing figured out.

 

[PaleRider]

Try making up solid core powercables and think..

 

[Rickster71]

 

[haraldo]

Try making up solid core powercables and think..

I been thinking a day and a half now, but didn't get any answers

Unless the power cables you have are getting warm in use, there is no advantage in changing them.

One advantage could be that the house doesn't burn down due to overheated cables

 

[josko]

Does anyone carry 2' and 3' power cords? I'd love to shorten up on all those 6'ers for components in my rack.

 

[jonnythan]

HDMI Cable, Home Theater Accessories, HDMI Products, Cables, Adapters, Video/Audio Switch, Networking, USB, Firewire, Printer Toner, and more!

 

[Craigslist Joe]

The exception

I agree with everything stated except this: Nordost power cables make a difference. I am guessing it has to do with the lack of dielectric contact with the conductor. The best way to describe the effect is an eddy current or a spinning bullet versus a smooth bore slug. I hear more detail in the middle of the treble frequencies as well as a cleaness in the mid bass region. The attack and decay of percussion instruments is noticeably better than with any other power cable I have tried. So take it for what it's worth: less dielectric contact makes an audible difference. Is the difference worth the extra dough? That's your call.