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