There went the last lingering threat of my respect for this outfit…

[fpitas]

Poor Diana Krall. She might always be associated with audiophile nonsense.

 

[Mart68]

it was her destiny.

 

[frogmeat69]

On topic: Is it shaped like that? Might make system integration a trifle tricky.

Is this thing solid and not flexible?? That would be a real pain, along with the pain in your wallet.

 

[egellings]

You had better place your gear in the exact position from the wall socket or this perfect geometric form will be wrapped around my neck by my Wife when she sees me installing something like this! Bloody Hell. The insanity has no limits. We should all immediately try to go insane because these brainless crazies have all the money.

Only 900 bucks! It's a steal! Get a couple for the kids!

 

[mhardy6647]

Is this thing solid and not flexible?? That would be a real pain, along with the pain in your wallet.

I am sure it's at least nominally flexible IRL (as they say), and the serpentine configuration in the (artificial) illustration is an affectation for aesthetics' sense.

 

[mhardy6647]

Poor Diana Krall. She might always be associated with audiophile nonsense.

Well, and Declan (Elvis).

 

[AaronJ]

Is this thing solid and not flexible?? That would be a real pain, along with the pain in your wallet.

I think the black part would allow it to retract like a kitchen sink faucet.

 

[Bob from Florida]

Here are the specs - for the $499 and $899 variants. Surge protection and noise reduction are identical indicating the active noise reduction and surge circuits are the same. The only difference is the weight in the $899 variant, which tells me there is more insulation. Also, both will be flexible with the more expensive version needing more help “forming“ the cable shape to the path used. Compared to insanity priced cables from certain other OEM’s these seem like a bargain. Whether they make any difference in what you “hear” is quite another matter. Having active noise cancelation and surge protection could be considered a “plus” and specs are given. Which would seem to invite someone with discretionary funds to send one in to Amir for testing (not me as I don’t use discretionary funds to buy high dollar power cables).

 

[droid2000]

Here are the specs - for the $499 and $899 variants. Surge protection and noise reduction are identical indicating the active noise reduction and surge circuits are the same. The only difference is the weight in the $899 variant, which tells me there is more insulation. Also, both will be flexible with the more expensive version needing more help “forming“ the cable shape to the path used. Compared to insanity priced cables from certain other OEM’s these seem like a bargain. Whether they make any difference in what you “hear” is quite another matter. Having active noise cancelation and surge protection could be considered a “plus” and specs are given. Which would seem to invite someone with discretionary funds to send one in to Amir for testing (not me as I don’t use discretionary funds to buy high dollar power cables).

View attachment 296268



View attachment 296267

Impressive

 

[Astoneroad]

 

[srkbear]

Yeah, after I sold my iCan Pro amp, I kinda regretted it..... after seeing this, I don't anymore to be honest, lol.

I admittedly still use my Pro iCAN Signature amplifier, primarily for the xBass bass boost, a feature that I haven’t been able to find elsewhere, They just released this insane iCAN Phantom which ups the ante on the Pro iCAN Signature by making all of the settings controllable by a remote, adding another watt of power, and adding an electrostatic energizer integrated into the main unit. The original Pro iCAN didn’t measure so well on here, not sure about the later iterations.

But their power “cleaning” line, I have no words for the fraudulence of it.

Pro iCAN Phantom

 

[srkbear]

Is this basically the same cord?

https://www.amazon.com/iFi-SilentPower-SupaNova-Power-Cable/dp/B091B6TVT8

Sacrilege! That was just the Nova, this is the Quasar! Even the name tells you it’s way bigger and better.

 

[NYfan2]

Here we go again, another firm that discovered that the easiest way to make money in audio is to sell cables
Very cheap to make, almost no risk of failure (how often did your cables break down) and the fools believe you when you claim it is the best sounding cable.

 

[srkbear]

Here we go again, another firm that discovered that the easiest way to make money in audio is to sell cables
Very cheap to make, almost no risk of failure (how often did your cables break down) and the fools believe you when you claim it is the best sounding cable.

The truly unfortunate thing is that they make quite a bit of very decent, affordable and popular DAC and DAC/amp combos, that have brought high end listening experiences to countless everyday consumers. Their desktop Zen line has a lot of fine options for less than $200, and their portables such as the Go Bar, Hip DAC 2 and xDSD Gryphon are all very decent options for those who are just looking for a well-made consumer grade product with little fuss.

Especially for rock enthusiasts, their xBass ASP low end enhancement is a very clean, simple option to give some oomph to headphones that have a sharp bass roll off. For that reason, I use their Pro iCAN Signature as my primary desktop amp, and their xDSD Gryphon as my portable. I also use their Neo Stream (bypassing its DAC to my d90se) as my streamer (it’s capable of passing through PCM 768 and native DSD 512, which is unusual for a streamer of any cost). Otherwise I use mostly Topping and Hifiman for my other components—I’ve saved a great deal of money on gear via ASR to save money for my headphone collecton!

Their Zen Stream is probably the best streamer-only option short of an RPI that you can buy—it’s a kitchen sink, volumio-based, Roon-Ready little guy that handles up to 32 bit PCM 384 and native DSD 256, full MQA support (for those who cared about Tidal before they switched to FLAC), both USB and S/PDIF outputs, exclusive modes for Tidal and Spotify Connect, Airplay 2, HQPlayer and Audirvana, and support for Qobuz, J River, Foobar2000, DLNA and others, for a mere $399.

Their wares haven’t set the world on fire in terms of measurements on here, save for their ieMatch dongle that raises the SNR for very low impedance headphones and IEMs (they have an unfortunate Burr-Brown obsession that has probably kept them from achieving true greatness). But their stuff is very solidly built, and for the most part has offered folks on a budget a means to attain high end listening experiences at accessible prices. As a kid I would have killed to have a Hip DAC or Go Bar to use for my phone, or a Zen DAC/CAN/Stream desktop stack, all of which are cheap enough to serve as birthday presents for a lot of folks.

But on the other hand, they seduce those markets into paying high dollar for a whole bunch of exorbitantly priced “power conditioning” peripherals and similar snake oils (such as in-line anti-jitter do-dads and most recently “audiophile networking” nonsense) that I’m sure add quite a bit of profit to offset their honest pricing elsewhere.

Their gear was my gateway into audiophile listening, when I purchased my first digital audio product way back in 2016, their Micro iDSD Black Label integrated DAC/amp combo—which at the time dazzled me when I hooked it up to my phone. Despite my lifelong obsession with music, I had never heard it presented in headphones at that quality before. Which is why the release of junk like this ridiculously overpriced power cable is such a disappointment to me.

 

[srkbear]

Here are the specs - for the $499 and $899 variants. Surge protection and noise reduction are identical indicating the active noise reduction and surge circuits are the same. The only difference is the weight in the $899 variant, which tells me there is more insulation. Also, both will be flexible with the more expensive version needing more help “forming“ the cable shape to the path used. Compared to insanity priced cables from certain other OEM’s these seem like a bargain. Whether they make any difference in what you “hear” is quite another matter. Having active noise cancelation and surge protection could be considered a “plus” and specs are given. Which would seem to invite someone with discretionary funds to send one in to Amir for testing (not me as I don’t use discretionary funds to buy high dollar power cables).

View attachment 296268

That and they gave 250 vac ratings for the Supa but not the Nova. Other than the appropriate connector/terminals for these respective cables, are voltage ratings even a thing for cables with this little resistance, especially for those at this gauge? I would think wire is wire if resistance measures are identical. And since when do power cables have “noise reduction” ratings? Also what does “no shielding to reduce capacitance” mean? Isn’t shielding the primary method to reduce EMI?

 

[AnalogSteph]

They say

Our Ground Zero design ensures the grounding conductor within the cable is unaffected by residual magnetism and unwanted induced voltage.

I don't see how though, the choice of a suitably chunky ground conductor excepted. No matter how fancy the L and N conductors are arranged, lumped capacitance to either of them is going to be about equal, and one is always going to be phase (full mains) and the other neutral (0 V return). (And then there's still power supply filter capacitance in the attached device.) Magnetic fields from currents flowing in L and back through N would cancel as advertised, though I don't see how they'd have any effect on PE to begin with.

If that worked, a cable like that would be nice to have for a bunch of PC owners whose power-hungry GPUs can really mess with the device's ground potential... well, not at that kind of price obviously.

iFi’s active system uses inverse noise current to cancel out the noise in the mains signal. Noise in the mains supply occurs at different frequencies, depending on the cause. Active Noise Cancellation II technology enables a power-conditioning device that is highly effective at reducing noise consistently across the entire frequency spectrum yet sufficiently compact and lightweight to position within the mains cable itself.

That reminds me of the "clean-up shunt" approach:

D-Noizator: a magic active noise canceller to retrofit & upgrade any 317-based V.Reg.

D-Noizator: a magic active noise canceller to retrofit & upgrade any 317-based V.Reg. ✪ A simple circuit that transforms a good, clumsy workhorse like the LM317 into a superreg so easily that you do not even need to cut a single track. ✪ ✪ It must be too good to be true.... or ✪...

www.diyaudio.com

Problem is, I don't think it would be very suitable for applications that demand substantial current, due to the series resistor involved. So not sure what they are doing, if anything.

The product description is good for some hilarity in general.
"Polymer casing for lasting durability for excellent conductivity" = PVC jacket?
"Finally, the SupaQuasar active power cable is finished in an impact resistant polymer casing for long-lasting durability" = ABS plastic?

 

[Galliardist]

The product description is good for some hilarity in general.
"Polymer casing for lasting durability for excellent conductivity" = PVC jacket?
"Finally, the SupaQuasar active power cable is finished in an impact resistant polymer casing for long-lasting durability" = ABS plastic?

But these descriptions work to sell the product.

I'm reminded of a job my partner was interviewed for but didn't get.
She said in answer to a question about an application the company used: "I'd write a Fortran program to do that" (the application concerned included Fortran libraries).

In a debrief, she was told that the successful applicant had a much better answer: "I would employ a procedural programming language and design an appropriate algorithm to implement this action". That, literally, was what she was told was the difference between them as applicants.

 

[egellings]

I'm going to be awake dreaming about and lusting after one of these with all that technology! At least they kept the waxing on about the build to stuff that is understandable and not in weird terminology and stuff that means absolutely nothing in physics terms. I perused the iFi website and yes, it is shameful that a company with the offerings it has went as low as power cord/cable hype. Despicable!

Only $900 each! Get a couple for the kids!

 

[Overseas]

900 was my end game integrated amp. Now I need 10x more expensive cables to upgrade it...

 

[srkbear]

They say

I don't see how though, the choice of a suitably chunky ground conductor excepted. No matter how fancy the L and N conductors are arranged, lumped capacitance to either of them is going to be about equal, and one is always going to be phase (full mains) and the other neutral (0 V return). (And then there's still power supply filter capacitance in the attached device.) Magnetic fields from currents flowing in L and back through N would cancel as advertised, though I don't see how they'd have any effect on PE to begin with.

If that worked, a cable like that would be nice to have for a bunch of PC owners whose power-hungry GPUs can really mess with the device's ground potential... well, not at that kind of price obviously.


That reminds me of the "clean-up shunt" approach:

D-Noizator: a magic active noise canceller to retrofit & upgrade any 317-based V.Reg.

D-Noizator: a magic active noise canceller to retrofit & upgrade any 317-based V.Reg. ✪ A simple circuit that transforms a good, clumsy workhorse like the LM317 into a superreg so easily that you do not even need to cut a single track. ✪ ✪ It must be too good to be true.... or ✪...

www.diyaudio.com

Problem is, I don't think it would be very suitable for applications that demand substantial current, due to the series resistor involved. So not sure what they are doing, if anything.

The product description is good for some hilarity in general.
"Polymer casing for lasting durability for excellent conductivity" = PVC jacket?
"Finally, the SupaQuasar active power cable is finished in an impact resistant polymer casing for long-lasting durability" = ABS plastic?

This just further reinforces my suspicion that the “tastemakers” in the industry, the writers at Stereophile or “professional reviewers” on YouTube or other corporate-funded websites—the ones that parrot this sort of marketing claptrap—have far less technical knowledge than their highbrow prose suggests. Same goes for a significant number of self-described “audiophiles” on Head-Fi (or the unfortunate “reviewer” from Amazon referenced earlier in this thread)—they launch right into their subjective assessments of these “features” with no a priori curiosity or due diligence into whether these terms defined de novo on these manufacturer marketing tear sheets and website descriptions even mean anything.

There are so many inscrutable, sciency-sounding audiophile memes that have become ensconced in this hobby and taken at face value as legitimate that it takes considerable effort to rummage through all the BS to get to the facts of any given product, and I can think of no audiophile outfit that is immune to it.