i know people spend crazy amounts on both power cords and speaker cables but is it really necessary? i'm putting another 2 channel system together and just thinking about buying speaker wire from blue jean cable and i think i'll be good to go?

besides the company claims and stats, any one really notice a difference in real life? power cords? after traveling all those miles the last 3ft really makes a difference?

the reason why i ask is i see a lot of value oriented system where people try to get the most value for their dollar on components and then they blow $600 on a 3ft power cord and $500 for 2 speaker wires.

does it just come to a point where people say might as well, spent so much anyway, or is it just to say you have it, or maybe there is a small improvement in fidelity?

Power cords don't matter at all as long as they can carry the required current. Speaker wire should just be large enough for the run involved. If in doubt, just buy 12gauge stranded wire and be done with it. Belden makes some 12 gauge 2 conductor jacketed wire for the professional market which is has tinned conductors. This eliminates any possibility of corrosion.

If anybody says that they do hear a difference with expensive cables, I'd be interested to know if they've still been able to still tell the difference in a blind test.

Gooomz,
You are now entering an area in audio that can create great emotion and sometimes - an emotional outburst.

Keeping it short.....
speaker cables:
You do not have to spend bunches of money to find good speaker cables. There are several place on the web - blue jeans being one of them, where you can get good quality cables at a good price.
I also like signal cables signal cables.
Monster cables can be fine - but it is an over priced marketing machine.

Power cables:
some people swear by them.... me - i would rather spend money on room treatments or on upgrading speakers then specialized power cords.
If you have good power protection/conditioning.... you should be good.


In the end, it is up to you to decide how important chasing the nth degree sound (surround)reproduction/experience is to you.....

Later,

Yes indeed. There is more BS to be found in audio than any other field, and cables are probably at the top of the heap in BS factor. In the old days, people built their own gear. Now that that is not possible, people obsess over the things they can easily experiment with - like cables.

Well, I can't see the need for expensive power cords, but my experience with several brands of speaker cable has taught me that differences, nuances, whatever, do exist. There's an element of truth in the idea that we obsess over things we can easily experiment with, but that doesn't mean experimentation can't pay off. I went from no-name cable to Monster to Kimber Kable to SignalCable, and was a little more amazed each time. I'm done now, and am quite happy with the sound of my modest 2-channel system. I'm also quite certain that I haven't been scammed.

Big question - did you do a blind comparison between each audition so that you didn't know the identity of the cable you were listening to, and the levels were exactly matched for each audition? If you didn't do this, your ears were probably playing tricks on you.

I know what you were trying to say here but I don't think it came across right. While true that a DIY builder couldn't put together his/her own surround sound processor and DVD player, they most certainly could build the rest of system by themselves.

Actually, this leads me to a question for Altec. A ways back, you posted a great tutorial on how to build your own cables. I know you took it off of the Saloon for legal reasons, but does it still exist anywhere else? If not and if you have time, I could PM you my email address and you could send it there as well. Thanks.

Jason J,
I'm not sure of the CAT5 Altec presented, but thru my family - this web site was found:
http://www.venhaus1.com/diycatfivecables.html

I built them and was impressed by the sound. I did not strip the main cable cover off because the 4 internal pairs are all twisted w/ different radius.
I did twist the cables in the same configuration.
I did not use the exact Belden cable - but one that matched or bettered the one listed.

Later,

Altec. Pretty sure my ears aren't playing tricks on me; I make my living with them—as I've disclosed in another thread here—so I've long since learned to figure out what and what not to trust. I had kind of a blind comparison thing going on through my wife, though; she'd notice things even though I wasn't always forthcoming with what I was doing with our system. Simply put, sometimes I acquired stuff surreptitiously and only disclosed it later.

Interestingly enough, I had to do some troubleshooting not long ago to help out a musician/neighbor and returned to one of the earlier speaker cables for about a day. I can remember being a little leery about doing it, thinking, "Geez, what if I really don't hear a difference?" Not a chance; there was so much less clarity that I almost couldn't believe I'd listened to music that way for so long.

By contrast, I've also disclosed on the forum that my experimentation with PCAs hasn't yielded quite the same level of improvement, difference, whatever, so I've got very little shame about seeing things for what they are. Y'know how it is…win some, lose some…or better, a learning curve…no sense fretting about it.

I started building my own power cords using Venhaus shielded twisted pair 12 gauge wires. I then used their Flavor 3 design.

If you'd like to see visually how much energy is transmitted outside of a power cord, just get your self a Greenlee Non-Contact Voltage Detector(I believe that's the name). It is a small, battery powered probe that detect AC voltages starting at around 60 volts AC. When it detects one, the led lights up and it emits a high pitch tone. When I use the Flavor 3 cords, there is no detected voltages, though I can pick up a voltage within a few inches of an unshielded power cord. So, whatever devices I have that use a detachable power cord, I've replaced with the Flavor 3 variety. The only complaint I have is that the Venhaus cables are pretty stiff. I don't go overboard on the high dollar plug ends.

I've built my own as well, using the DH Labs bulk AC cable and connectors from Wattgate and Marinco.

Opinions on whether they make a difference or not has been documented on these boards before and varies widely.

That's about as much as I want to say at the moment, as I'm not up for doning my asbestos suit today for the ensuing flames.

Interesting analysis. I can see where having well-shielded power cables can be a benefit, thinking mainly about all the other cables that are typically in proximity to those cables and may not appreciate the "bad influence" of an unshielded power cord.

Soundhound\'s DIY Interconnects

The radiated AC voltage from a power cord is not going to have any effect on the internals of a piece of equipment unless that equipment is very poorly designed. In sensitive circuits, that's the reason for outboard power supplies.

Just being able to detect the radiated electromagnetic field of AC verses not being able to means nothing. If you can tell me exactly which circuits would be effected and the technical means of the effect, I'd like to hear about it.

Flame On
I'm just providing input on what I have tried. I gave the results I could test for. Those who want to comment against my results need to provide proof on their own.
Flame Off

Being a designer of audio equipment, I try to debunk misinformation, and unfortunately the audio field has more of it than other fields.

The EMF around a power cord is not going to have any sonic impact on a properly designed piece of equipment. If somebody is concerned with the EMF being picked up by interconnects, I need to remind them that good interconnects already have shielding which protects them from interference. In any event, it is good practice to keep AC power and low level audio cabling at least a foot or so apart, and never have them running in parallel for any distance in order to eliminate inducted interference (this is standard installation practice in professional installations, and it should be followed in the home).

If someone is concerned about EMI/RFI being radiated from a power cord, this is what power line filters are for - use them! They are inexpensive and effective if this type of interference is a problem. Tripplite "Isobar" series filters are extremely good at stopping EMI/RFI from reaching equipment, and stopping digital clocking artifacts or switching PSU noise from one piece of equipment from entering another.

Once the AC is inside the equipment, in a good design, it is kept far away from low level circuits, and proper shielding is incorporated. The path of the 120VAC is short; generally it goes through a fuse, a "hard" on-off switch, a surge limiter (in power amplifiers), then to the power transformer - all of this is far away from sensitive circuits.

So whatever is used for the short transmission of AC from the outlet to the IEC plug on the back of your gear is not going to have an impact, and whether or not the EMF is escaping from the jacket of the cable or not has no bearing on anything.

This is not flaming - I'm just passing on solid engineering practice, which has been proven over decades of use within the audio industry.

If your concerned about EMF from a power cord, then what about the EMF coming from the rest of the wiring in the house?

Not to mention the electromagnetic field generated by the power transformers in the equipment. And of course, what about the EMF coming from overhead high voltage power lines in the vicinity. There are much, much, much more important fish to fry than worrying about EMF escaping from an AC cord.

Two things to say.

1. I use B&W CDM7NTs as my mains. I originally got them for a 2-channel audio system. I noticed a distinct difference when I replaced standard 2-wire copper cable with a pair of DH Labs Q-10 cables that were biwired. The DH Labs cable is relatively inexpensive, and you can buy cables used for about 1/2 the original price if you look on Audiogon or eBay. When I got my 1070 and a CDM Cnt I made up a third cable from DH Labs Q-10. I use 12-guage copper for the surrounds, and don't plan to change that unless I win the lottery.

2. I added an external phono stage to my audio system several years ago. First I tried a Creek model, but there was a lot of noise from FM radio signals, so I sent it back. I then found a Gram Amp 2 and it had less noise. At the suggestion of Graham Slee, the designer, I got a bunch of ferrite shields for the turntable's power cord and the interconnects running from the turntable to the phono stage and from the phono stage to the Amp. That fixed the problem and it was cheap.

In my case, there are no other electronic devices near my HT equipment. Bringing down the noise level in its immediate area is being handled by my PS Audio Ulitimate Outlet, an APC H15 Power Conditioner, and a Mondail Magic Coax Ground Isolation Device.
The final step is the shielded 2-wire IEC power cord connections to the equipment itself.
I can't/won't mess with the 3-prong devices, and will not modify the equipment that does not have detachable power cords.

If concerned about AC line interference (EMI), there is a very effective and technologically solid way to combat it. That is using balanced power to your equipment. This is what major recording, film and broadcasting studios use with their gear.

Essentially, what this entails is a center tapped isolation transformer which plugs into the "unbalanced" AC line from your wall. The center tap on the secondary is grounded, and the outer legs of the transformer feed your equipment balanced 60VAC phases, which add up to the standard 120VAC. This scheme acts exactly like balanced XLR interconnects in that any crud on the AC line cannot get through due to common mode cancellation.

That way, your AC cables have NO external field, zip, nada. This method is far more effective than shielded power cables, and will reduce noise inducted through the AC mains to nothing.

Equitech makes a line of balanced power transformers which are used heavily in the professional industry.

Equitech Balanced Line Transformers