Power Cord Lenght ? Better shorter or longer?

On some powercords like the filled Shunyata cords it makes a bigger difference than say the Electraglides or Synergistic. We have experimented with many powercords and on every single brand that we tried a super long powercord it was better than a short one - - marginally. But for the costs difference it was just not worth it. Plus, where do you stick all the excess?

Some cords use specific geometries to achieve "filtering action". As such, altering the length can change the amount of total capacitance or inductance of the design which in turn alters the amount of "filtering" taking place. That would explain why a shorter cord ( less filtering ) might sound slightly inferior to a longer cord ( increased filtering ) cord. This assumes that the cords DID have some specific design and type of attenuation built into them. Otherwise it would not matter one iota other than the potential for greater series resistance and voltage drop with a longer cord. Sean
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For all audio applications, shorter is better. For IC's, speaker cables, digital cables and power cords. For power cords and speaker cables, inductance is the parameter to be minimized and it increases with length.

If you are using the cable as a tone-control, then none of the above applies. But doing this guarantees that you will never get an accurate reproduction of the original performance.

Audioengr, are you trying to say that a highly capacitive cable design becomes more inductive as you lengthen it ? I am having a REAL hard time following your statements both here and on AA. Either we are having a REAL hard time communicating our ideas or we have some phenomenally different ideas about things. Seeing that i have primarily agreed with most of your findings in the past, i'm wondering what kind of stumbling block we've recently run into with PC's.

When it comes to power cord design, my goal is to remove everything but the original 60 Hz sine wave that was generated by the power supplier and minimize the transfer of noise from conductor to conductor or conductor to ground. I "think" that this is your goal also but i'm not sure given our recent "debates". Sean
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What I am saying is that all cable designs become more inductive as you lengthen them. The inductance per foot does not change, just the total inductance. Just as all cables add capacitance as they get longer.

Designs that have very low inductance tend to have higher capacitance per foot, due to coupling between the conductors.

My goal is to minimize the inductance in a power cord. I dont believe in filtering-out high-frequencies because this puts impedance in the way of transient currents, which must flow unimpeded. Particularly bad for power amps. Some filtering may make sense for line-level and digital components.