CarlSeibert Posted July 11, 2009 Report Share Posted July 11, 2009 Hi, Has anybody got a great idea for a really good power cable that's under about $50 in parts cost, including connectors? The new Woo needs a power cord. At the moment, it's attached to the wall with a spare 14/3 Belden. My past thoughts on power cords have been pretty basic - for-real adequately sized conductors and shield the living bejeezus out of it. I've had good luck with some nice star-quad plenum wire with the safety ground on the outside, a la the recipe on TakeFive Audio. I pulled one of those cords out of my living room system and tried it on the Woo. It was lovely. But nowadays everybody's into braiding everything. I've made some very nice sounding interconnects that are unshielded. And, by the foot, that plenum cable is getting pretty pricey. Maybe it's time to question assumptions and maybe try something new. Ideas? -Carl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spritzer Posted July 11, 2009 Report Share Posted July 11, 2009 If you can find some of the Kimber braided cords cheap then they would be a good option. I know that Russ Andrews in the UK sold them but they present a new definition for expensive... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hopstretch Posted July 11, 2009 Report Share Posted July 11, 2009 (edited) Signal Cable Video Reference? 14 AWG, 3 conductor, 100% foil shield, $49. Edited July 11, 2009 by Hopstretch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlSeibert Posted July 12, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 12, 2009 Signal Cable Video Reference? 14 AWG, 3 conductor, 100% foil shield, $49. Thanks! You're the second person to bring up Signal Cable. A local friend has one of their power amp cords and a set of speaker wires and is thrilled with them. They're beautifully crafted, good performing and he paid really fair prices. On their site I saw this one: MagicPower Digital Reference 12 AWG 3 conductor twisted design High purity stranded copper for maximum conductivity Copper braid + foil double shield Teflon insulation + Teflon outer jacket It looks REAL familiar. Deja vu all over again. It's pretty much exactly like mine, except they've got that cool herringbone jacket and they used a Schurter IEC plug instead of a Marinco. For about $10 more than the parts cost me(!) If only it wasn't as still as rebar. Have you ever tried their digital cables, by chance? I'll probably build this cord. I've got to order some parts anyway. But I'll be needing a S/PDIF cable soon. It's longer than I have patience to build, unless it turns out to be a just-use-the-magic-coax-as-it-comes-off-the-reel affair. Reks - I didn't remember, but I used a Volex cord on a project a while back. It looks a bit nicer than the Belden to me, but I never compared the two. When I Googled Volex, I hit Allied Electronics' site. I used to have their catalog when I was a kid. I had no idea they were still around. -Carl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diebenkorn Posted July 12, 2009 Report Share Posted July 12, 2009 I have this cable and it is obnoxiously stiff (physically) have not really compared it to others. I just ordered some Iron Lung Jelly's. Be happy to let you borrow it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hopstretch Posted July 12, 2009 Report Share Posted July 12, 2009 I have this cable and it is obnoxiously stiff (physically) have not really compared it to others. I just ordered some Iron Lung Jelly's. Be happy to let you borrow it. I have one too (Digital Reference) and agree it is way too inflexible. I used to use it on my PS3, but it didn't make me any faster in GT5 Prologue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Currawong Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 Once I added 2 basic Furutech plugs, it came closer to $100, but I rather like the result I got building one from Cryoparts CryoMax power cable. It's chunky and inflexible stuff though. AJ Van Den Hul reckons that power cables have to be at least 5ft/1.5m to make a difference though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlSeibert Posted July 13, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 AJ Van Den Hul reckons that power cables have to be at least 5ft/1.5m to make a difference though. Some people say that about speaker cable, too. Personally, I think the very act of having less cable is probably better. Unless of course the idea is to separate components that really shouldn't be right on top of each other. Then again, how many two-chassis components have umbilicals that are half a foot long... hmmm. -Carl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grawk Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 The reason that's true is that short cables aren't as prone to introduce noise, which is the only way cables can make a difference for power. 100 miles of aluminum wire to your breaker panel from the power plant. 200 ft of romex from the breaker box to your outlet. 2 ft of anything from the outlet to your gear... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Currawong Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 I was pondering how involved it would be to set up battery-supplied power to a hi-fi system. I'm surprised all the high-end nuts don't have one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grawk Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 some do (that's how redwine got his start) There's also power regenerators, which do have a chance of making things better. I think mostly, the idea is to have gear with good power supplies, then cables don't matter so much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlSeibert Posted July 13, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 Speaking of power regenerators... Has anybody actually tired one the the UPSs that work that way? It's an intriguing thought. Five or six hundred bucks for a UPS is in the range of (sort of) reason for cleaning up mains power, particularly if you live somewhere where the sags and spikes are downright dangerous to your gear. On the other hand, the several thousand dollars an audiophile re-gen power conditioner is silly unless you just have more money then you need. Personally, I'm pretty sure five grand for a Berkeley Alpha DAC will buy me a lot more sound quality than any amount of power line filtering. -Carl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dusty Chalk Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 I was pondering how involved it would be to set up battery-supplied power to a hi-fi system. I'm surprised all the high-end nuts don't have one.Exists, I forget the name of the company though. I distinctly remember a pic from a trade show where it looked like you had to wade through car batteries, they had that many. But I didn't think they had implemented it perfectly -- they used it to generate A/C, and then you know 90% of the internal power supplies converted it back to DC -- why didn't they just run it at DC to begin with? Strikes me as more efficient, though I could be wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n_maher Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 why didn't they just run it at DC to begin with? Strikes me as more efficient, though I could be wrong. Simple really (at least in my head), if you run DC through a rectifier (and how would you bypass that in most components, I don't know) you'd likely drop a bunch of volts needlessly and end up with less VDC than you need. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luvdunhill Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 I have something in the works... pretty crazy though. I use a SLA battery to generate 3 phase AC power. Key components are, precision clock, lots of logic ICs, 41Hz chip amp, and three toroids wired in reverse to step up the voltage. I decided not to use an ipod playing a .wav to generate the control frequency for AC power, that's crazy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hopstretch Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 On the other hand, the several thousand dollars an audiophile re-gen power conditioner is silly unless you just have more money then you need. Personally, I'm pretty sure five grand for a Berkeley Alpha DAC will buy me a lot more sound quality than any amount of power line filtering. Just get a dozen Noise Harvesters and let them eat all your tasty power impurities. Om nom nom nom. You can tell they work precisely as advertised because when you plug them into an electrical socket they light up, see? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dusty Chalk Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 Simple really (at least in my head), if you run DC through a rectifier (and how would you bypass that in most components, I don't know) you'd likely drop a bunch of volts needlessly and end up with less VDC than you need.Yeah, I figured it might be something like "a/c is easier to work with". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swt61 Posted July 13, 2009 Report Share Posted July 13, 2009 (edited) I have something in the works... pretty crazy though. Marc coming from you that's one of those things we just take for granted, so the statement is unnecessary. As for power cords. I've tried many of them, some fairly expensive. I've come to the conclusion that for normal lengths anything over an Iron Lung Jellyfish is overkill. I just couldn't hear any difference. Edited July 13, 2009 by swt61 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sherwood Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 I really benefitted from that decision. My stupid huge "blanco gordo" is happily powering my moscode amp as we speak. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlSeibert Posted July 14, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 Just get a dozen Noise Harvesters and let them eat all your tasty power impurities. Om nom nom nom. You can tell they work precisely as advertised because when you plug them into an electrical socket they light up, see? >>>"harvest and redirect the AC line noise into a storage tank" OK then. -Carl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bhd812 Posted July 14, 2009 Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 CarlSeibert do you have access to the breaker box? if so just have an electrician run a dedicated line with a nice oyaide outlet, its easy and the best power upgrade you can do! amazing difference running the line is not hard, if you have conduit running in the walls then running a new dedicated line won't take more then 20 mins..seriously one reason why i love Chicago, its building code to wire with conduit! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlSeibert Posted July 14, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 14, 2009 CarlSeibert do you have access to the breaker box? if so just have an electrician run a dedicated line with a nice oyaide outlet, its easy and the best power upgrade you can do! amazing difference running the line is not hard, if you have conduit running in the walls then running a new dedicated line won't take more then 20 mins..seriously one reason why i love Chicago, its building code to wire with conduit! Conduit gives me a warm and fuzzy about hum and interference as well. Sadly, I don't have conduit and the rafter space in my house isn't accessible. If it was, I'd have dedicated 20 amp lines to both the living room and den systems in a heartbeat. I once lived in an apartment and the receptacle my system was plugged into was a mess - old, corroded, loose. I marched over to the local hardware store and bought the heaviest-duty-looking receptacle they had. It was generic 20 amp job. It cost less than $2. (And yeah, this was a 15 amp circuit. Did I mention "rental apartment". I hope I had sense enough to take the thing out when I left, but honestly, I just don't remember.) Anyway, the improvement was amazing. For two bucks. A few minutes with some DeOxit and the cardboard shaft of a Q-tip can work wonders for next to nothing, too. -Carl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smeggy Posted July 15, 2009 Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 (edited) I run all my gear from daisy chained staples power strips, works great and I can plug in my fridge and microwave too while still leaving one spare socket in the wall in case I want to run the vacuum cleaner. I don't bother with plugs in the signal line, I like to secure the wires in the sockets directly with match sticks for a purer signal. Edited July 15, 2009 by Smeggy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grahame Posted July 15, 2009 Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 I run all my gear from daisy chained staples power strips, works great and I can plug in my fridge and microwave too while still leaving one spare socket in the wall in case I want to run the vacuum cleaner. I don't bother with plugs in the signal line, I like to secure the wires in the sockets directly with match sticks for a purer signal. Shocking! [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-GEmHtIRNk]YouTube - Electricity Hazards (1970) - UK Public Information Film[/ame] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smeggy Posted July 15, 2009 Report Share Posted July 15, 2009 pfft, they weren't using audiophile matches, damn industrial n00bs! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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