This is a review, teardown and measurements of the Tice Power Conductor 2 vintage AC power cable. It is on kind loan form a member (cost unknown):
While the terminations are beefy, no self-respecting high-end audiophile would want to be near a cable looking like it was left over from Radio Shack store of 1970s! There is scant information on this cable. The bit that is there is in used market and states exactly the following on the function of the switches:
Makes perfect sense, no? Well, let's take the box apart:
Nothing in there but the switch. It seems at first glance that the neutral white wire is being disconnected in one orientation of the switch. This made no sense as you can't power the device that way. Meter confirmed that the connection remained even when the switch is in disconnect mode! So I took the ends off and it was then that I realized there were 5 conductors, not 3 in the cable. We have the standard Line, Neutral and Ground in thick gauge. The white neutral is hiding under the black and green and yo only see it if you look sideways. The three wires go from one end to the other so switches do not impact those at all.
The thinner white and black wires simply mirror their corresponding thicker conductors. Put another way, if you close the switch on neutral, you just get an additional thinner wire terminating at the same two ends. Ditto for black. This simply changes the resistance of the cable ever so slightly so no way it can have the impacts the company claims.
I was tempted to stop here as there is not even a remote chance of this having an effect but thought we should measure so here we are.
Tice Power Conductor 2 Measurements
I started by powering my Topping D70s using a standard AC cable. Here is its output, the thing we eventually listen to:
Here is the response when the Tice cable is used to power the DAC with either switch variations:
There is a tiny performance degradation but I think that is just run to run variation.
Let's measure frequency response as that is where we see the impact on bass and treble:
All three curves land so accurately on top of each other that it leaves no room for any variation. Not a thing is changed in the tonality of the DAC.
Conclusions
It is fascinating to see the nature of such tweaks years ago, vs the sophistication today. We have a box with just two parallel wires being taken in an out. Today they don't make it so obvious with talk of nano particles, EMI, etc. My sense is that whoever put this together had no engineering experience and just imagined such an implementation would change the sound. Anyway, there is nothing here to even lend imagination to make the sound different let alone be tube like and such.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome. Click here if you have some audio gear you want me to test.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
While the terminations are beefy, no self-respecting high-end audiophile would want to be near a cable looking like it was left over from Radio Shack store of 1970s! There is scant information on this cable. The bit that is there is in used market and states exactly the following on the function of the switches:
Makes perfect sense, no? Well, let's take the box apart:
Nothing in there but the switch. It seems at first glance that the neutral white wire is being disconnected in one orientation of the switch. This made no sense as you can't power the device that way. Meter confirmed that the connection remained even when the switch is in disconnect mode! So I took the ends off and it was then that I realized there were 5 conductors, not 3 in the cable. We have the standard Line, Neutral and Ground in thick gauge. The white neutral is hiding under the black and green and yo only see it if you look sideways. The three wires go from one end to the other so switches do not impact those at all.
The thinner white and black wires simply mirror their corresponding thicker conductors. Put another way, if you close the switch on neutral, you just get an additional thinner wire terminating at the same two ends. Ditto for black. This simply changes the resistance of the cable ever so slightly so no way it can have the impacts the company claims.
I was tempted to stop here as there is not even a remote chance of this having an effect but thought we should measure so here we are.
Tice Power Conductor 2 Measurements
I started by powering my Topping D70s using a standard AC cable. Here is its output, the thing we eventually listen to:
Here is the response when the Tice cable is used to power the DAC with either switch variations:
There is a tiny performance degradation but I think that is just run to run variation.
Let's measure frequency response as that is where we see the impact on bass and treble:
All three curves land so accurately on top of each other that it leaves no room for any variation. Not a thing is changed in the tonality of the DAC.
Conclusions
It is fascinating to see the nature of such tweaks years ago, vs the sophistication today. We have a box with just two parallel wires being taken in an out. Today they don't make it so obvious with talk of nano particles, EMI, etc. My sense is that whoever put this together had no engineering experience and just imagined such an implementation would change the sound. Anyway, there is nothing here to even lend imagination to make the sound different let alone be tube like and such.
----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome. Click here if you have some audio gear you want me to test.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
