Let's talk power cords

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?)

Charles yes indeed he said the nano-liquid coating needs a lot of burn in so he said >800 hours before he ships it out. And I plan to try it on both and see what sounds best. I have good cords now Cerious Nano Signature I hope this is a nice improvement.

More great service from Chris I chose free UPS ground shipping instead the cable shipped yesterday USPS 2-day Priority Mail should be here tomorrow. Needless to say very excited to hear it!

@jond 

That's cool, jond. Looking forward to your impressions. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of a new power cord as well. Waiting is part of the fun I guess.😀

Cheers,

Scott

I haven’t posted here before, though I often come and read to inform me. It is an interesting forum.

I can’t help but post though to express utter bewilderment at why some people want to expend so much time and energy telling other hifi enthusiasts that they are wrong and that mains cables has no effect. What are they trying to achieve and what is their motivation for doing so? I just don’t get it. I’m trying to understand.

Is it that they feel that they are genuine moral protectors of consumer rights? That their mission is to therefore point out that all these people buying power cables and hearing a difference are being very misled, that they are hearing things which don’t exist? And by implication therefore questioning the integrity of these people? Aside from this moral crusade reason I really fail to understand what motivates someone to tell someone else they are so wrong and misled.   Why spend your time doing this? 


I have recently completely changed my system and have been testing everything. A change of power cord, particularly to a Shunyata, actually changed the sound significantly, and I mean significantly, so much so it was the equivalent of a change in CDP or amp. I can switch power cables and my wife (not an audio person) instantly notices a difference even when she is concentrating on something else, without any care or interest in what I am doing and without being asked for an opinion.

I know when I hear a difference and I actually expect NOT to hear a difference as that is often my experience. For example I recently tried a mains Grounding Cable, one which has been discussed on this forum in a couple of threads recently, which many say noticeably improves the sound. I head zero difference. Nothing. But I’m not going to go around saying it doesn’t work. I’ll tell you of my experience with it and that I found no change to the sound at all, but that is all I can report.

And with my mindset, one that needs to hear the proof and frequently doesn’t hear the proof, I can 100% tell you that Mains Cables make a difference. A big difference.

One day I should write up my notes from my comparisons on cables, amps & speakers as it may be of interest to others.