bypass outlet and hook wires directly to romex??

Bwhite, I perceive thou art pretentious and self-elevated. At least that part appears clear. And perhaps that you had a philosophy 101 course.

I find it funny how your power cords are ranging in the $2k plus price range and yet you are performing all these tests with the zip cord you purchased from Home Depot (doesn't make sense unless you're displeased with your power cords performance). But for the sake of this thread you now pretend that it is I who performed the expirments. This is silly and should be a waste of your time and mine.

Although I've not tried any power cords retailing at the $2k plus range, I have no problem assuming there to be some to many even at that price break and beyond that probably offer no sonic improvements over the zip cord that you purchased at Home Depot for your expirments.

For the same reason one could spend $30,000 on an amplifier that may offer no sonic improvements, and may in fact sound worse than a $995 amplifier. I'm sure you would agree with this.

Based on what you claim to have spent on your system, you more than most, by now should realize that this hobby usually requires one to spend a lot of money to realize one does not need to spend a lot of money.

And, yes at this point, I'm having great difficulty believing that you have actually tried running romex straight from the service panel to a male IEC connector which plugs into the component(s).

Per your request, I forgive you.

Stehno... Sorry you took what I said as being pretentious and self elevated. I will accept your comment and bow my head to you with sincerity - I feel bad about coming across that way (understand that I may have) and do not wish to argue further.

A point I would like to make is that most people (including myself) do not jump directly into a 2000+ power cord without trying MANY less expensive solutions first. I have experimented to the point where the cost of my failed experiments actually rivals the price of my power cords. So what's better, to blow a bunch of cash (which can never be reclaimed) on projects that really aren't terribly successful or to just look the other way while paying WAY TOO MUCH for something that works better?

It isn't much different than buying a pair of speakers that sound worse and cost less because we want to save money. Only to find ourselves upgrading - selling at a loss and spending even more money to eventually get what we should have purchased in the first place. It's the audiophile trap I guess...

I wish I had someone who provided me guidance, suggestions or oppinions before I embarked upon my past experiments because it could have saved me lots of anguish.

Fortunately, today we have Audiogon - a means for people to communicate and learn from the mistakes and experience of others. This is a very valuable tool.

Stehno, great observation! I came to that conclusion years ago - about not having to spend a bundle, just spend enough in the right places. I have found that all systems have their limitations and that getting perfect 20Hz bass is one of the most expensive roads to go down. I just accepted that for my needs/budget I could get very good bass down to 40Hz and really excellent performance everywhere else for a fraction of the cost. BTW, I rarely listen to Saint Saens Organ Sym. #3 anyway.

Thanks, Twl. I'm sorry Bwhite, but I couldn't help but feel I was now put into the position of defending Home Depot's zip cord of which I've never dabbled with in my system. So I got a bit defensive and lashed out a bit. Please accept my apologies also.

Twl, that great observation came from a very knowledgeable friend and probably saved me quite a bit of frustration and money.

But it certainly did not take me long to believe that observation.

Twl, may I ask what you've done to try reproducing the bottom-end?

Sure Stehno, I'll tell you what I can about my trials and tribulations regarding that topic. I have built quite a few different speakers in my day, and the designs varied based on my knowledge at the time I made them. Good low bass isn't hard to get, it just requires the introduction of other design parameters that can be very problematic to the rest of the design. Most people would say that direct radiating bass from a large cone driver with a proper Fs and system Q is best for deepest bass. Vented or unvented propose different quandaries: vented usually creates notches or cancellation effects at some points, unvented tends to raise the Fs and limit low extension( large boxes and isobarik helps this problem, but adds others.) It's a "pick your poison" situation. TL(transmission line) can be very good if you get it right. Alot of tuning. To be short, this requires multi-way since no one large driver goes to 20k(or near). You already know my feelings on that. My solution was to address the problems created for the system by impedance spiking at the Fs(resonant freq of the driver). At this point, either a crossed-in sub or rolloff in response is the normal choice. The rolloff is caused by the increase in impedance creating a load that is usually 9 to 24 db down for the same power input level. It spikes around the Fs and tapers down below the Fs. By paralleling a properly calculated resistor(non-ind) across the speaker terminals, this spike can be reduced by about 60%-70%, thus allowing the amp to "see" a more driveable load with consequently reduced rolloff. This evens out the response curve in the most critical area - Fs and below. Now the amp can drive the speaker to much lower frequencies(+-3db), with rolloff ocurrring much deeper than before. Now, with my current one-way system, spl is limited by cone size and won't move the air necessary for real low bass. So I tuned a transmission line for half the Fs to bolster the additional octave of bass response(83Hz-41.7Hz). This is a big can of worms to tune without messing up the lower mids. Since it is a front firing line, notch effects do happen, but I reduced it down to slight by tuning. This impedance adjustment w/resistor also corrects the high rollofs as well, since they are also due to impedance rise, although at a much slower slope. Both ends improve, in my speaker's case, to within the 3db down point of the amp with regard to impedance. The price to pay is that the nominal impedance of the system is also reduced by some 25%. Some amps may not like this. However, you'll notice that the peaks are improved by a far greater amount, due to the product divided by sum nature of the load. It amounts to a very simple way to flatten and widen response of the interface between amp and speaker, with a minimum of additional complexity. Just for fun, go look at some driver graphs where they plot frequency response and also have a graph for impedance curve. You will notice that on a good driver, the flat section of the response curve is also the flat section of the impedance curve(around nominal). You will also notice that the rolloffs in the freq response curve also correspond to the rises in the impedance curve at the same frequencies. By flattening out one's rises(impedance), you also flatten out the other's dips or rolloffs(freq response). How about that?