Let's talk power cords

Agreed jond-
pre-amp first since this the heart of any system.
Happy Listening!

I just wanted to say how awesome Chris Venhaus has been to deal with. I made a mistake as I mentioned on my initial order, Chris got back to me the very next day and refunded my money same day. He gave me advice on what cord matched my budget which I took. Emailed me the day it was in the build queue, asked my preference on which end the shield should be connected, and is burning my cable in for 800 hours before shipping. Truly exceptional communication and service thus far!

Yes, Chris is one of the good guys to deal with as are many others that I've had the pleasure to communicate with. :-)...

Hi Jond,
800 hours? Well you’ll be the recipient of a thoroughly burned in power cable 😊. I get the preamp "heart of the system" idea but I’d try it on both the preamp and your tube Audio Note  DAC. Most DACs are generally quite responsive to better power cables. Curious to know where the cable will have the greater impact in your fine audio system.
Charles

My first experience with a better sounding powercable was when I bought a premade Pangea Power cord.. Primarily because it was cheaper than a cord I could make myself.
I put that Pangea on a Forte’4 amplifier I owed and GOLLY! the bass was better than with any other cord I had/made. This was an easy repeatable experiment.
So naturally over the years I have bought a pile of Pangea power cords.
When I bought an ’upgrade’ AC9SE.. I thought I would just stick in in the path between the wall and the power conditioner (Furman REF20i) to break it in. But it sounded better right off than the AC9 I had there!
Where the AC9SE did NOT sound better to my PS Audio P600 conditioner than the AC9 .
Also I found that the 9s sounded better to my preamps than the 14s.

On the other hand I have no interest in further experimenting with big buck AC cords..
But I can say I was not a ’believer’ in AC powercords mattering.. Until I found out I COULD hear a difference. Though I have not done more to check if even ’way better’ ones matter.
I am sort of cheap.. and lazy. (what I have is great, so why keep chasing when I am satisfied?)