I am looking to see how the power cord is connected to the power supply. Thinking about trying a power cord swap just to see if it makes any difference.

My friend just built some power codes for his tube amps and the difference was quite apparant.

If nobody has any pics, does anyone know if the power cord is just crimped into place or is it soldered?

Thanks.

Larry

If you look in this thread psklenar supplied this link which has pictures of the insides he took when the 1050 was in original beta. I would guess the insides have not changed.

Thanks. I had seen these pics, but it doesn't show how the power cord is connecting in any of the pictures.

Maybe I will pop mine open if I can find the time.

Larry

The power cord is more than likely soldered in if it is not socketed at the rear.

Yes, I believe it is soldered to a PCB after it comes into the case. Unfortunately, if I recall correctly, it's difficult to get a good photo of that ... it's under the small PCB behind the coil .


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pat----

email: pat@sklenar.info ---===--- home page: Grumpy's Lair

[This message has been edited by psklenar (edited January 17, 2003).]

Then that black cable with the multiple wires is the power cord going under the power supply?

Thanks.

Larry

I knew a guy who swore placing a brick on top of his amp improved the sound, and also that using little 'tiptoes' on the same amp was an improvement. I'd suggest trying those first, as they won't void your warranty or expose you to dangerous voltages and they actually work on exactly the same principle.

If you like the brick, further improvements are said to be possible by purchasing a special 'brick' weight thing designed specifically for the purpose, at added expense of course.

I know this is probably falling on deaf ears (or eyes) but if it is not obvious what is the power connection inside the unit, and you don't know what is part of the power supply or not, you should NOT muck around inside. You wouldn't take apart the engine of your car withoug any knowledge of it's workings would you?

Again, coming from my humble experience, there are many things that can change the sound of a component, but changing the power cord is not one of them.

Larry,

I wouldn't think so. The wire coming in the back of the 1050 would have just two conductors, not a bundle like that.




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pat----

email: pat@sklenar.info ---===--- home page: Grumpy's Lair

Charlie: If you have not heard what a good powercord can do, don't knock it. The "magic" brick is jus hilarious.

sh: I wouldn't be doing this based on a picture. Before I open the unit I wanted to know for certain that this was doable. As for working on an engine. BTDT many times over. Built a race car from the ground up and have done quite a few engine and tranny swaps over the years.

Pat: I didn't think it would be the multiple wires within the black sheath, but it is the only black cable in that pic heading to the power supply and was guessing their.

Once I crack mine open, possibly on Sunday I will snap some pics and let everyone know if this is feasible.

Larry

I know none of what I say will make a whit of difference, but I need some typing pracitce, so here goes

I hear differences in my system every day. Sometimes I play something and it sounds like garbage, sometimes magnificent. No changes, just different day. The human ear is extremely fallable. How else do you think things like Dolby Digigal can work - processes that throw out as much as 90% of the original data?

At times I have done something, changed something somewhere and heard a difference in the sound. Then I have stopped and done back to back comparasons in real time before change and after - guess what? The 'diferences' disappear. I know you are convinced that your friend heard big differences with the change of power cords in his tube amps. Have you stopped to ask what actually caused the change, and try to track it down and maximize the benefits of the change? In other words, if the mere changing of an AC power cord made such a big change, there _must_ be something in the system that is being very suseptible to external change. Is that RF interferrence? EMI interferrence? Harmonic distortion on the AC line? Low AC voltage? High AC voltage?

"Tweaks" by themselves may or may not actually make a difference, but if they are blindly done as a fix-all band aid cure to some imagined problem, the results cannot be predicted. I know I am sounding like the Professor on Gilligan's Island, married to scientific procedure, but sometimes a good scientific perspective can accomplish a lot more than just 'tweaking' without any thought to the problem to be solved. Personally, If I suspected that my AC power was causing some problem, I would put monitoring devices on it to determine exactly the state of the power. If it was contaminated with interferrence, then a filter appropriate to combating the interferrence would be indicated. If not, I would look elsewhere.

My question is this: What exactly are you trying to accomplish with the power cord change, aside from it 'sounding better'? What 'problem' are you hoping to solve? If _I_ change the power cords on all of my equipment, will it all sound beter? If so, WHY? Does this question matter to you?

I am not trying to be a smart ass asking these things. I tweak my system all the time: as a matter of fact I did some work on my electronic crossover today, changing the slopes of the crossover of my subwoofer. From a perspective of making real improvements, just 'changing things' on blind faith makes no sense. I bet you would be surprised and horrified if you knew the tortured path your electricity follows from the generators, through the high voltage power grid, through multiple step-down transformers, phase compensation, fuses and whatnot before it reaches your house. And you intend to undo all the potential "problems" endountered along the way with the simple change of 6 feet of power cord? Have you given any thought to what those 'problems' might be?

So go ahead, swap out that power cord. I'm sure your receiver will sound much better than before. I'm sure it wouldn't dare sound worse for the change.

Now that I've gotten my typing practice, I think I can go to bed. Good night all.....

[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited January 18, 2003).]

One thing to think over - consider how many miles of wire and devices are between the transformer inside the 1050 and the generator at the power plant and ask what replacing one well designed very short conductor with a second well designed short conductor could possibly do, from a rational standpoint. There are as many ways to argue this as there are sunsets, but if this thought experiment doesn't cause you a bit of hesitation in your convictions I'm not going to try to talk you out of it anymore.

Do be careful if you go forward with this, energy can be stored inside the unit even when powered off. And have a good one.

Well I do see one advantage to changing power cords. For me it has to do with having the perfect length cord. I make my own power cords, to specific lengths. This helps keep the rats nest of wires more manageble. More importantly it makes it much easier to keep the power cords seperated from the IC's. I much prefer units with IEC sockets since I prefer to not change internal power cords until after the warranty is up. Also you may reduce the resale value by changing the cord.

About a year ago I switched my system from stereo only to HT. At first I had a huge problem with hiss and hum. Some of that had to do with my antenna ground. The rest had to do with haphazard placement of cords and IC's and power cords that were too long. After a few weeks of IC purchases and rewiring new power cords my hiss problems "magically" disapperaed.

All this without changing the miles of cable between my house and the power company.

Cable routing is definitely important. I found that I was able to get rid of some system hum by bundling my power cords together and routing them away from all other interconnects. They now run bundled up along the left edge of my entertainment center and over the top of everything else, leaving the rear of the rack clear for interconnects and speaker cables. They drop on the right side, where they all plug into my Panamax MAX5100. All of my power cords are what came with the equipment, though.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

If Larry was talking about cable rerouting I misunderstood. I think he's talking about somehow adding magic cables to deliver improved power to the unit. At least that's what I thought was going on. My bad?

He was talking about replacing the power cord to make the sound better. He had a friend that did it and his tube amps sounded better.

If the length of the cord is an issue, you can always simply cut it off to length, and put a new plug on the end

True, good point. I personally go with the old tried and true cable tie and sticky back system, but maybe I'm just too lazy to redo all the cables every time I add or remove equipment. I suppose if the rack was pretty static it might mitigate that a bit.

Sorry about that -- Larry was talking about power cable replacement, but morphsci brought up cable routing and I sort of followed along that train of thought...

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

Yes I did bring up cable routing and its interaction with cable (IC and power) length. In my case routing the bundled power cables away from the IC's reduced my noise problems, but did not eliminate them. After I modified the power cords to length, the problem was eliminated. I attribute that to a combination of not having the power cords in tight looped bundles as well as better shielding and grounding in my home made power cables.

When I replaced my power cables I was amazed at the cheap construction and small wire gauge in the power cords of some of my components. Others looked much better and probably only needed trimming as Soundhound recommended. I am also a fan of using hospital grade connectors because they seem a lot more solid when you plug them in.

BTW I am not suggesting megabuck power cords here. I now use some quail hospital grade 14 gauge cords. They are terminated on the wall outlet side but unterminated at the component/iec side. I then trim them to length and fit them with a nice Wattgate IEC from parts express. Cable cost about $10, IEC connector about $20.

I am also a firm believer in using good connectors for both power and IC cables. I am very fond of Canare true 75 Ohm connectors for both audio and video cables.


[This message has been edited by morphsci (edited January 18, 2003).]

It is common practice to use hospital grade wall sockets in professional installations, and I use them as well. They are better built, and give a more positive connection. As a bonus, they are 'gas tight' so there is no possibility of explosions when your room filled with gas fumes

Outlets come in many grades and the ones commonly used in home construction are pretty poor.

Also, some components (most of them, actually) have very modest power requirements and shouldn't need or benefit from a bigger set of conductors. If I can't trust the engineers to size the power cable properly why am I trusting them with the more complex job of designing the rest of the device?

I'm not even going near the 'full of gas' comment.

There are some manufacturers that market outboard power supply 'upgrades' for their components to ones with suposedly more current capability, which they say will sound better. I won't get into that one!

Doesn't that speak to the compentency of the manufacturer? An announcement like that would concern me if I were a shareholder.

Electronics manufacturers are not alone in this kind of thing. Harley Davidson knowingly markets motorcycles that have shortcomings in the design of their engine, which they will gladly take your money to 'fix'.

Yet another reason I'm not a Harley fan - sorry. See comment above -

Now Titan, that's a different story....

Larry, whatever you do, FOR HEAVENS SAKE DON'T REPLACE THE POWER CORD!!! You'll accomplish nothing of substantial benefit, and only end up voiding the warranty and possibly damaging yourself or the unit.

First of all, safety: I don't know what kind of capacitors the 1050 power unit has (neither do you, I venture), but if you're not careful and short out a power capacitor, it could blow! Those power capacitors can carry a lot of energy.

Second, I seriously doubt you'll see any difference -- soundhound had a good point regarding cause/effect. Power supply signals are pretty nasty due to turn-on transients (i.e., voltage spikes) created by other appliances (the fridge, the dishwasher, the heat pump, etc.)

Engineers recognize that power supplies are not "clean", and that's why they design in power filters to clean out the signal before it's sent to the audio circuitry (since the 1050 is 100% digital w/ no tubes, there's less of an effect). Power units also have voltage regulators to make sure the DC level voltages are accurate. Power supply line replacement isn't gonna make one hill of beans difference compared to what the filters and voltage regulators are designed to do.

My guess is that if you're hearing a "hum" on his tube amp or think a given cable sounds better, you're probably hearing your friend's wife vacuuming.

If you REALLY want to make sure you have a clean voltage signal, get an AC line conditioner that FILTER the line (not one of those cheap AC strips).

See this Stereophile Article about line conditioners, and try this before messing up your 1050.

http://www.stereophile.com/printarchives.cgi?460

There are lots of fun ways of tinkering w/ the 1050. This is not one of them.

Cheers, UW (former Electrical Engineer in my prior life)

P.S. If you REALLY want to shorten the power cable length, then I'd suggest cutting the plug off and putting on a new plug and the desired length.

All this was was something that I had tossed around with my friend. He has Rogue mono tube amps and a Rogue tube pre-amp that he replaced the power cords for. Yes, I know the Rogue just plug in and don't require opening the case. Made a huge difference. We also have a friend that used to design and test amps and told us what a difference the power cords can make. The standard "computer" power cord that comes on/with just about every single piece of audio equipment is garbage and passes along all sorts of noise.

It was just something that we were going to try if the cord was clamped down and not soldered into place.

The noise he was hearing was not from a vacuum, or any other electrical appliance in the house. It was a combination of the outlet and the powercord itself. He replaced the outlet first, still heard the noise and then built new cords and it made a vast improvement.

I'm not going to have time to open my 1050 up and take a look inside until the middle of Feb, so once I see how it is connected I will make my decision then. If it is not clamped down I leave it alone.

Thanks for everyone's concern and ideas, I do appreciate it.

Larry

I make a habit of looping my excess cord up and wire tying into a neat bundle - but this discussion has me wondering... would coils of electric cable create some kind of electrical field that could pass along noise to patch cables. - (Isn't this kind of how a motor works? winding wire around and around?) It would seem to make sense that if you didn't have coils, or used a shielded cable you could eliminate that interference. But what do I know.. I only lasted 3 semesters as an EE student.

As long as you keep the AC cables a foot or more from your interconnects, you are OK. I bundle my AC cables the same way and route them along one side of my racks, the interconnects on the other side, which is standard practice in large installations.

Shielding your interconnects makes a big difference. I discovered this when I got the Outlaw PSC cables.

See http://ubb.outlawaudio.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000573.html

Cheers, UW