Review: VH Audio Flavor 4 Power cord

As for break in procedure, I have one of those IEC to AC adapters & just plug the PC into a very heavy duty fan I have out in the garage & turn it on for a week.

The Flavor 4 is the best PC I've put on my amp and pre amp for that matter. Before doing the DIY thing with 83802 several years ago, I tried a lot of different PC's & some of them choked the soundstage & bass right out of the system. I followed Chris' development of his wire & made a bunch of Flavor 2's & then tried the Flavor 4.

I inadvertently plugged both an Ayre V-5x & V-1x into the same 20 amp dedicated circuit & it tripped the breaker. I repeated this just to verify it wasn't an anomaly before moving the amps to separate lines. This also happened with the V-1x & Classe CP50 pre, so my thoughts are the Flavor 4 allows full current draw to the amp. Never happened before with other PC's.

The first thing I noticed using the Flavor 4 on the amp was more bass presence & that presence is more defined & tighter. On the pre it took the edge off, although I recently changed from an ARC & thought the Classe to be more forward.

Listener57: I do remember Chris mentioning they offer a connecting device ( cheap ) that will allow you to Daisey Chain 2 cords together and plug into a Refrigerator for a week or so.. This would work great if you were going on vacation for a week or two and you could cook em during you trip! I just didn't bother. I am a little baffled though at how good these cords sound at the price point....

These cords put to use very simple and commonly understood factors of electrical conductivity. Why other companies have such a hard time of doing or understanding this, i don't know. There are ways to improve the design of this cable even further, and i've discussed some of this with Chris. Having said that and at this price point on the commercial market, they are a very good basic power cord.

As far as break in goes, you have to draw very high levels of current for an extended period of time. Most of what we are "breaking in" is the actual dielectric of the cable. This occurs primarily from thermal stress but may also be somewhat influenced by the electron interaction itself. I'm not a metalurgist though and i don't play one on TV either : )

With the above in mind, finding a device that pulls very sizable amounts of steady state current on a regular basis, and one that actually cycles off and on, can provide a viable alternative to just hooking it to your system and forgetting about it.

Personally, i think that a long and strong current draw should be applied to the cabling being "broken in". After a period of time, the current load should be cycled off an on at random intervals. This causes the dielectric to shift and stabilize to what should be its final settling point. That is, unless further thermal stress greater than the stress already applied is encountered.

Personally, I have electronic devices that pull in excess of 150 amps of current. Given that i can regulate the current draw of these devices, i can vary the amount of current that i want to pass through the cabling feeding it. The set-up that i have makes it easy for me to use a PC to feed these items, whether singularly or daisy chained together. Setting the component to draw a steady 10 - 20 amps when it can dissipate 150+ amps places no thermal stress on the component itself whereas PC's are "cooked" quite thoroughly in a short period of time. After all, power cords connected to a standard audio component, even on amps, only supply current as it is needed. This is typically quite low in level and varies on a dynamic basis, making the process take quite a long time. Ramming current through it on a steady state basis is equivalent to hundreds of hours of dynamic current draw that one would encounter during listening sessions.

After doing this a few times and checking various cables, the very obvious weak point in all of those that i've checked has been the actual IEC and AC plug connections. Due to the lack of conductivity where the cables join the connectors at both ends, there is a LOT of thermal loss ( heat ) generated at those points. If one can improve the connections and conductivity, it stands to gain that the performance of the cable should improve on the whole. Bob Crump has made mention of this in some of his posts and spoken of soldering the connections rather than relying on the crimping or clamping action that most cables make use of. Those that are into DIY'ing and / or adventurous with their "expensive" after-market cords might want to experiment with this a bit. Sean
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Sean, do you think simply applying something like Walker Audio SST Contact Enhancer to the metal conductor inside the cord end prior to its simply being crimped, or clamped during manufacture, would allow better performance, even if a company wishes to avoid the extra expense of soldering? Since this works to optimize power transfer when applied to the prongs of a cord plug, there might be even better results if one also applies it directly to the "weak link" portion of the power cord, as you identified it.

Sean, your mention of soldering vs. crimping is very insightful. I always assumed non-DIY power cords were all soldered, and now I wonder? I believe based on the comment attributed to Bob Crump, I can rest assured the TG Audio cords are all soldered.