Hello everyone
I started off in "hifi" as a true cable cynic. Wire is wire bla bla bla, however, I took the time to compare various "wires". It started with cheapo interconnects. Some times I heard a difference, other times none. As my interconnect comparisons continued, if I heard an improvement in sound delivery and the price was justifiably reasonable I upgraded the lesser interconnects. I am now running balanced Audioquest Sky interconnects and matching digital cables throughout my system. I wont upgrade any further as I believe the cost of any future upgrade does not justify the improvement of the sound. I used the same mindset when I compared and upgraded speaker cables. The same applied to power cables. Some power cables, in my system in my room (I agree with what Stu Pitt mentioned earlier - you must know your system in your environment to notice the smaller details your sound system sends you) did make a difference. Others none. ( Speaking about knowing your music system and room environment.....I changed the curtains once - I went from really thick heavy double lined curtains - "drapes" you call them ?? -to thinner lighter curtains. The sound in my room changed. I think the heavy curtains were over dampening the room) I tried various lower and middle end Furutech power cables - no difference in sound delivery. My system did however like the Isotek cables. Which preformed even better after I changed the male and female plugs on the power cord. Fitted the Furutech rodium plated plugs. Compared them against a friends Isoteks fitted with the gold plated Furutech plugs. The gold plated ones were better sounding. So I stripped every plug, went to work on it with a dremel, polished away the rodium coating to expose the "pure" copper beneath. Compared the copper version to the rodium version, the copper won.
R Murray stated that there was a certain smoothness and increase in detail in his system with certain power cords. I found that too. I will even add that the background was quieter too.
From my own experience the purchase of a decent power conditioner, in my case the Isotek Sigmas, was a better buy than all the power cables combined. The power condition does a really good job of cleaning up the power before it feeds it to to system. The system as a whole benefits - with or without fancy power cords.
Who was it? Vegasdave!! Vegasdave spoke about dedicated circuits. Tried it. Got a 3 x 4mm core active screen 15meter long dedicated 40amp (220volt) cable from the circuit breaker to my sound system. Didn't hear any difference after installing that. (active screen you may ask....the earth and the cable screen / shield is connected together at one end of the cable, but not at the other. The earth must be properly connected at either end of the cable for safety reasons)
For me, trying to find small affordable tweaks to my system (both av and stereo) motivated the above experimenting. (Thats also why I tried upgraded fuses - which you may have read about somewhere here.) The reason was that I am really happy with the various hi-fi components, but wanted a little bit more out of them. Upgrading these components - as in buying a more expensive component - for a small increase in sound at a greater expense just doesn't do it for me. As much as I love music (and a decent movie) I still look at the cost vs enjoyment ratio.
Ronald
