• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Expensive power filters, power cables

egellings

Major Contributor
Joined
Feb 6, 2020
Messages
4,005
Likes
3,245
Keep in my that they are just that; tweaks. They may or may not fix anything, although they will likely do no harm either. A large inductor in series with the AC and a power amplifier will degrade the voltage stiffness, and I would not want that. Don't want mushy bass.
 

Wolf

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Nov 21, 2020
Messages
557
Likes
589
Location
Indiana
When the coil only interacts with the power above the freq of 50/60Hz to cut out the harmonics of the noise, then I don't see how that's going to be of concern. FWIW, I use one, and my bass is not mushy.
 

devopsprodude

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2021
Messages
332
Likes
324
Location
Beaverton, OR
In the UK, we have a chap named Mark Grant, who makes and sells some nice and not always expensive cables of various types. His mains cable is high current rated, screened so it looks posh and it's very well put together with good quality sensible parts. It cost me around fifty quid here for a 1m iec to 13A plugtop cable -

https://www.markgrantcables.co.uk/department/mains-power/mains-power-cables-mains-power/

Buying everything in one-offs as a domestic bod, I honestly doubt I'd be able to get the parts for much less than half the price. His interconnects with sensible connectors at fifty quid or so are also very good if you can afford the extra over the perfectly good Van Damme types (brand snobbishness often makes Van Damme look tacky but again, use them 'blind' forgetting they're there and they're absolutely fine!!! - maybe a different colour than black might help :) ) Look at his prices for the WBT ones though - same wire but foo plugs which can rip basic RCA socket banks apart if you're not careful (most audiophiles aren't very careful in my experience! - took one to know one... :D )

https://www.markgrantcables.co.uk/department/audio-cables/stereo-cables/


Seriously, you really don't need to spend shedloads of dosh on wires and connectors. I do accept that people who've spent tens of thousands on their stereo may want expensive wanky wires to connect the parts up with, but it seriously isn't necessary imo.

A pal who worked for years in a high end London 'audio salon' once raved to me about the new 'cheap' Transparent Audio mains cable. Cost a mere £760 at the time I remember. Transparent also make mains filters in expensive nicely shaped boxes - thousands each I believe in different caste-tiers without checking - and apparently, you can only use two sockets out of four for best 'sound.' That store had awful mains though and when I worked there for a few months back in 1998, we used the Russ Andrews mains blocks at then £200 (Kimber wired?) to great effect.

So, my pauper mentality suggests not to bother with expensive foo wires and boxes, but if you have a very expensive flash stereo, that's not going to put you off :D
I like everything about this comment, especially the little bits and bobs of lingo/idioms.
 

egellings

Major Contributor
Joined
Feb 6, 2020
Messages
4,005
Likes
3,245
If the coil has effect only at high frequencies, then it will not be a large one resistance and inductance-wise, and it will not degrade supply voltage stiffness noticeably.
 

Wes

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Dec 5, 2019
Messages
3,843
Likes
3,788
how do you calculate an elastic modulus for supply voltage stiffness?
 

egellings

Major Contributor
Joined
Feb 6, 2020
Messages
4,005
Likes
3,245
Same way you do for Young's modulus. It ain't that complicated, though. Supply stiffness can be known once you realize that the supply is just a voltage source in series with a resistor. Put an arbitrary known load on the supply and note the voltage sag. Compute the source resistance knowing the amount of sag and the value of the load resistance. Done.
 

ahofer

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Jun 3, 2019
Messages
4,952
Likes
8,698
Location
New York City
In this post at Audiogon, they were very pleased to see an ‘electrical engineering explanation’ of how power cables make your system sound different.


It references a podcast here:


Obviously, I’m skeptical. And, of course, a whole thread at Audiogon without the vaguest suggestion of a controlled test for audibility.
 

TheBatsEar

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Jun 16, 2020
Messages
3,084
Likes
4,962
Location
Germany
Interesting maybe, but Yamahas power cable for the CD player CD-S 1000 has 0.5mm² copper strands. The amplifier A-S 1200 has 1mm². It's printed on the cable, but both look like a generic cheap power cable.

What do they know that we don't?
6265ef680a650fb6306457d3bdec02e7ea6de0b4ef8e59b3968d31744f632469.jpeg
 
Top Bottom