Dave,
I have the original 27 year old outlets in my house. There has been lots said about this one and that regarding outlets, with apparently different members touting their particular favorites. What are your thoughts concerning upgrading the standard outlets in the house. Upgrades appear to vary from $7.50 to $250 per outlet. Also, how does cryo treatment affect outlets and sound?
Scott
Outlets are a great topic and a bigger source for controversy. I'll dive in and tell you what I have experienced in the many years of trying everything out there. Remember that some of this will be from the standpoint of personal taste. Most of it will be from a nuts and blots point of view.
When you read about a house fire that resulted from "faulty wiring" a large percentage of the time this will be a problem at the outlet. Over the years heating and cooling cycles during the change of seasons as well as the heating that occurs under load will loosen the screws that hold the wire in place at the receptacle. The purpose of the screw is to provide a gas tight mechanical connection between the conductors and the receptacle. When the connection is loosened by the expansion/contraction phase of heating/cooling oxides will form around the conductor and on the receptacle body. The majority of the oxide is cupric oxide which is semiconductor at very best and a nonconductor under most cases. A small portion will be cuprous oxide which is a better, but not great conductor (except at deep cryogenic temperatures). In salt water regions corrosion and oxide formation is more complex and much faster. When these oxides form in conjunction with loosening of the mechanical fastener, a vicious cycle is created that generates more heat, which generates more oxidation which generates more heat, which.... you get my drift.
Back to your house with 27 year old receptacles. I would take the time to go around the house and check each receptacle. Turn off the circuit breaker for each receptacle and do two things: 1 - check each outlet for tightness on a plug. Loose ones will have big oxide deposits and should be replaced. Often time this is where the danger lies. 2 - remove the coverplate (remember: TURN OFF THE CIRCUIT BREAKER and check to make sure that the recpetacle is really dead electrically
) and remove the receptacle from the wall. Check for tightness of the screws and especially for black deposits on the wire. If necessary clean the wire with emery cloth and reinstall the wire making sure you really squeek down the screw. I would bet that you will find many receptacles that will take a good 3/4 - 1 turn to tighten them. I do this every couple of years in my house and every 6 months or so in the listening/media room. It is amazing how much better the audio system sounds and the video looks with clean tight receptacles.
Receptacles. Everyone seems to have their personal favorites with Hubbell and Pass & Seymour/LeGrand being the front runners. I never saw a Cooper that I liked for audio, personally. My choice is Pass & Seymour (YMMV). I use Pass & Seymour Heavy Duty Specification Grade 5262 (15A) and 5362(20A) units in my products. They have .032 triple wipe line contacts and I have found them to be of consistently high quality. My selection for special applications are the 5262A and 5362A Extra Hard Use Specification versions. They have .036 triple wipe contacts, but are 8 times as expensive as the Spec Grades. They do have a death grip on the plug, though.
Speaking of the "death grip": this is not a good thing when it comes to highly polished rare metal plated plugs. Furutech, for example, has receptacles that seem to have relatively low tension on the contacts. If you will take a look at the plug contact you will understand why. The plugs have a very high polish and are usually plated with gold or rhodium. Inserting the plug into a high pressure receptacle will deform the soft alloy of the plug blade and begin to scour the plating off of the blade. This is not a good thing. For this reason, I recommend that Furutech receptacle be used with Furutech plugs. Same goes for Oyaide and the other exotics. We need to use our heads when it comes to what goes into what when it comes to electrical connections as in life.
The topic of gold/copper/silver/rhodium is another topic. We can go there, but it should be in another thread. I personally think that a very high quality standard receptacle/plug combo will serve 80% of most audio requirements. The exotics are best left to the final tweaking stage as they tend to be tone and detail controls.
Cryo: you had to ask, didn't you?
Here is where the bugs come out of the woodwork in most discussions. The following is my experience and should be taken as such. If you already think I'm crazy then this will cement that opinion. If not - read on.
I have never heard a cryo treated component that sounded worse after treatment. 90% of the time it (whatever "it" is) will sound better. 10% of the time I scratch my head and can't quite put my thumb on it. It always sounds different, just 90% of the time is that different "better". In my experience, cryo treatment will make the piece sound clearer, cleaner and with a rounding (fullness) of timbre. This is not to say less detail, far from it. The detail is richer and smoother with more flesh and less glare. I have never heard cryo treatment produce profound changes. A profound change is going from a Bloze Wave Radio to a really good audio system. The changes run from very subtle to mild depending upon the resolution of the system. In systems with great resolving power changes are less subtle and more textural in scope.
I like cryo. I have cryoed the receptacles and the conductors in my products from the beginning. The treatment made them sound a little bit better. It is those little bits adding up that can make that system sound very special. I think that is why we are here (hear?), no?
Back to the shop.
HTH
Dave
