Power Cords

@ricred1 - it's too bad that you don't live close to me (central California).  I would love to see how some of my "built" power cables stack up.  Usually, when cable companies move up in their models, they always go to silver / silver-plated components.  I have tested many items with silver content and it just doesn't sound right to me.  The audio always has a push in the upper mids and also puts forth an artificial flavor to the sound.  It just does not sound natural/real to me.  Even a tiny silver fuse is too much silver content in my system. 

I always use Furutech rhodium male/IEC plugs with one of the following configurations:

- braided 20awg solid-core OCC copper Teflon coated. (6 braids for 12awg, 8 braids for 11awg)

- Audioquest NRG-4 (best audioquest cable without their DBS system).  Chopped with furutech rhodium connectors.

Granted the Audioquest is light at 13 awg (so if you want more, I would just double up the cables -- the Furutech plugs are large enough to accept them).  However, this is the only UL rated cable that uses solid-core conductors of the proper gauge (19awg for hot, 21awg for neutral/ground).  There are some other offerings out there which use 18awg or 16awg conductors.  In my experience, those conductors are too large and will roll-off high frequencies.

These cables are going to be less than $500 to build.  I'm not sure how they will stack up to something like $3,000-6,000, but I am not willing to find out.,  And the fact that they are probably not going to be solid core and that they will likely use silver is a turn-off for me. 

The Wire World is still stranded cables.  Granted, they are putting the strands into small bundles, but it's still stranded.  Though, this is much better than high-stranded stuff like Furutech OCC copper, but it's still stranded.  I've tested the Alpha-OCC stranded cords and they sound like low-fidelity equipment.  It causes a bright "solid-state" cheapness type of sound.  It just doesn't sound right, even though it's OCC and expensive.

@ricred1 - I don't know that the older Audioquest power cords were that bad.  The cord itself (such as NRG-4) is very good, but a significant amount of the sonic signature is also determined by the terminations, which were typically gold-plated.  An excellent high end cord terminated with gold-plated plugs will sound very nice - it will hit with authority and weight, but it will just not have as much attack and detail as a rhodium connector.  Silver clad (like the Wire World) can help things.  But once you get into silver / silver-plated stuff it will push the sonic signature towards the "silver" character. 

There are definitely some exotic designs out there (High Fidelity, Verrastar), but I still focus on what they use for terminations.

When you take a look inside the Marantz products you see the cheap parts. This proofs how limited they are. The company who does the technical support of Marantz in my country told me hoe poor the parts are they use.

I would highly caution everyone reading something like this to not automatically take this comment as a "fact".  For example, I have looked at the internals of the AV8802 processor and I have not seen any "cheap" components.  The Marantz does use a very slow op amp for I/V in the DAC section of the AV8802, which definitely contributes to the Marantz warm voicing.  However, the layout and design of the DAC board is excellent with a large number of localized power supply filter caps.  Of course, the caps could be upgraded to something like Nichicon Muse or Polymer (for digital), but you have to realize that this would significantly increased the retail cost of the product.  All the components I have seen are pretty good components. It is certainly not cheap components like Emotiva.

As you go up in the Marantz models, the more expensive units will use better components, but they are always voiced as "warm", which may or may not be what you are looking for.  It doesn't mean that Marantz is cheap or bad.  It is just the "Marantz voice".

As far as Calman 2017 goes, it is software used as a tool to help calibrate video displays.  The "calibration adjustments" are dependent on what is used to modify the video signal to make the display show proper colors.  The adjustment capability depends on the device.  The Marantz AVR may have some color adjustments available (hugh / saturation / white balance).  The display itself may have some.  These adjustment are usually not enough to give as good results as something like a Radiance video processor or another color cube correction device.

@guidocorona

@ricred1

I whole heartedly concur with a couple of your statements on being objective. The idea of someone pushing a statement as the be-all-end-all "fact" and then continuing on a rant to try to force this idea without offering any objective statements on how a characteristic sounds in comparison to something else is to be avoided in my opinion.

I have read other threads from this poster and statements such as "Monitor Audio is the best speaker period and B&W is garbage" tells me the poster has some sort of agenda. For example, I recently was looking to upgrade my speakers and both Monitor Audio Platinum II and B&W D3 were on my short list. This was until I read a review the Monitor Platinum had highs that were somewhat lacked excitement. This prompted me on to further research which indicated that ribbon tweeters tended to have more of a laid back sound, where conventional tweeters such as diamond/beryllium had a more exciting sound/impact. Now I have no doubt that Monitor Audio is a fine speaker. However, I could not find a local place to listen to them and the "laid back ribbon tweeter" sound was not my preference. I ended up going with B&W D3 and have no regrets. I love the resolution and excitement this speaker brings me.

My point is that the choices are all relative to the type of sound somebody wants to hear. The new Audioquest cables could be very good indeed, but I have yet to see a full technical description on Audioquest’s website. It’s obvious that they are tripling the cords to make larger awg. They are also documenting the wire conductor material (such as solid PSC copper or solid PSS silver). But I have yet to see their description of termination plugs (whether they are gold-plated, silver-plated, or whatever). I hesitate to believe an outside source for this if Audioquest themselves have not published these specifications.