So is the AC feed throughout the building braided? Or does the last 3-4 feet of an expensive braid negate any issues with standard building regs wiring?
How do the wires in the wall sound? They are solid and not braided. Does the braiding at the last couple feet bring back all those lost sounds from the power going into the power supply to be converted to something else?
1. When 2 wires run in parallel there should be capacitance between wires which might “bypass” high frequencies. The inductance is extremely low even in a coiled wire, I don’t think there is much impact of inductance. 2. Inductance should play good role in power cables - we need 50 Hz only on the power inlet, inductance can reduce high-frequency noise. That’s why we put ferrite rings on the cable and use inductors in the power sources of devices.
What I believe to be true makes little to no difference in this world, but here it goes: folks like Paul McGowan and Danny Ritchie at GR Research say similar things about cables. They both have systems that are very carefully set up, in rooms that are treated. I followed Paul's speaker placement tips, and those of Ron at New Record Day, in order to get the most out of my system. Now I hear things I have never heard before, and my system compared to theirs is laughable. I can hear a difference between speaker cables now; I could not hear it as well before. It went from marginal to significant. I will add that I have compromised hearing on my right ear, and I can still hear it well enough. I'm not willing to write off anything, as I believe everything matters. Rather I'd like to keep an open mind until I'm put in a position where I can hear it for myself.
You make a good point, Paul's system has been carefully engineered and the room has been specifically treated. Many people don't have that option as most people didn't have their house built from the ground up with the concept of having a sound room installed.
@@chrisgoodson9312 true, but the bitch about hearing is that it is so willing to create reports to satisfy expectations. It didn't evolve in a way to be useful to audiophiles, except for subjective pleasure. It is simply incapable of the error free reports that fans of exotic wiring cite as evidence justifying the purchase decision.
Almost every power cord that you buy is twisted at least. If you take a cheap computer power cord and cut the end off you will see this. Same with s.o. cord, even some nm cable is built this way. Also, when your power reaches your equipment it is changed from AC to DC power. DC power has a completely different characteristic than AC. The transformer and capacitors do most of the filtering you need. I do think that keeping as much noise out of the system as possible is a good idea but to spend thousands of dollars on power cables is ridiculous
Well said. I was a disbeliever until I tried building my own power cables and heard the difference. Equally impactful as interconnects IME. I followed a recipe from VH Audio. I use 12 gauge semi solid conductors. The hot and neutral are a twisted pair with a fairly tight twist. The safety ground is wrapped around that pair in the opposite direction at one twist per foot. Then good copper based plugs. They work well reducing noise and bringing out bass slam. And yes, I have no explanation how this helps when there is 30 feet of 14gauge nomax running from the outlet to the breaker box. Makes no sense but it is easy to hear. I have had others come to my room with their amp same design as mine. After wondering why mine sounded so much better I said try my power cord on your amp. Bam. All of a sudden it woke up from it's slumber.
Aren’t the 15-20 amps power cables in the wall in parallel from the power panel to the outlet and introducing inductance? Does braiding the cables from the power outlet to the amp really makes such an improvement in front of that?
@@joezunenet Absolutely... It makes no sense, but the impact on sound is clear. I could imagine that if you had heavy gauge braided cables from the panel it might make a difference. I have 400 amp service to the house and the conductors to the transformer are the size of your finger. Then plain ol 14AWE to the outlet.
@@user-od9iz9cv1w I think you’re right, I just found online that the inductance is inversely proportional to the size of the wires. So either you get large wires, or you braid them.
don't kid yourself. The room is magnitudes more of an influence on the sound than a three foot power cord and questionable theories, so any DIY is better applied there. I trust the do it yourself power wire hasn't burned down your house in the years since this was posted. the reply was just an attempt at common sense, often not of great critical concern when men pursue hobbies.
Thank for this video. I am just wondering one thing if you could please elaborate on it as it does not add up at all for me. One can have braided cables for thousands of dollars, however in ones walls there are normal - mostly cheap - electrical parallel cables, which you could probably buy miles of for the price of the cable in this video. So from a bigger perspective, the power flows from the power station, trough the grid, to your house, then trough the walls of your house, to the power outlet, then finally to a super expensive turbo cable for let's say 2 meters. So how does it makes any difference, adding better cable at the very end of the electrons route? I understand that using worse power cable than in the walls, might have negative impact, but I don't understand how using better power cable than what one has in walls can improve anything. Please explain
Yeah, it's just snake oil. Even Paul himself said in a different video about I think XLR Y-Splitters that it does not matter for that little length of cable to use a Y-Splitter, in the grand scheme of things that Y-Splitter is about the same length as the power cables from the power plant to your amp :) So he is even contradicting himself here
@@rafajrichard I'm analytical by nature and I've been on the empirical evidence side of this debate until I listened to a highly refined system that could explicitly demonstrate the differences. I also started following Danny Richie's RUclips channel in the namesake of his company: GR-Research. I don't think there are many people in the industry more knowledgeable than Danny and he's not just a believer in quality cables potentially having audible differences theory, he's knows balls to bones the differences are detectable by the human ear. Although I would prefer to see data we could measure with electronic equipment, the scientific method is an ongoing endeavor. Assuming our current scientific understanding of sound is absolute is probably the bigger mistake. I never thought I'd end up on the other side of this debate because I lean VERY heavily towards data, but I think my conclusions were wrong about this one.
Didn't use a silver spoon, BUT, I did drive myself to (near) madness about ten years ago braiding up a pair of Chris Venhaus CAT5 speaker cables. While it was a finger-numbing experience I was dumbfounded on the difference it made to my system. When compared to the mid-priced Monster Cable I had been using the difference was far more than night and day. In fact, "miraculous" might be closer to the truth. Since then I braid everything I get my DIY hands on.
speaker wires are very different from a three foot section that supplies juice to be converted into the appropriate voltages to run the various circuits, lest anyone be confused. I also made my own speaker wire, and was quite pleased at the result. they were very stiff and thick, making them hard to work with and defiantly had a home made look. since the wife was not a stereo nut, after a while, I switched them out for a nice looking set of monster cables, the kind that everyone hates. Since any change in an electrical circuit, like speakers to amp, can effect function, I did hear a difference , and didn't love the results. fortunately , my system is pretty good. so little things like that are insignificant , and my ears then got accustomed to the change in sound, forgetting the previous experience.
@@richardelliott8352 I think you're right about any change in an electrical circuit making a difference, and I always hear it whenever I change wire---sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic. A couple of years ago I switched from a balanced Mogami Neglex 2534 Gold interconnect to the much touted Belden 8402, also balanced. The nice soundstage completely collapsed!!! Two dimensional, with everything plastered flat against the wall. It was a shock, especially since the Belden at the time was more than twice the price of the Mogami. Listened to it for several weeks, and finally put back the Mogami and the wide, deep soundstage returned. You never can tell. At least when you roll your own you can experiment for a lot less money than buying ready made.😄
@@robertspringer9477 An interesting question. The interconnects were constructed from one of a number of different articles that appeared in a book entitled "The SuperCables Cookbook" by Allen Wright, an Australian who founded a company called Vacuum State Electronics. As I recall, there were no explicit instructions as to how to begin the braiding so I guess the author didn't think it mattered. I used silver-coated single-stranded insulated copper wire throughout. The speaker cables were constructed from a similar scheme when a friend told me he could obtain drums of computer data cable that was being discarded because it was too short for inter-office wiring but he thought it would be fine for even quite long speaker cables. Each cable consisted of four pairs of twisted insulated wires and with my friend's help, we braided three of those cables then joined all twenty four wires together at each end. I was amazed at how good they sounded, even though I had used expensive van den Hul cables before. I'm still using those braided cables years later - and they're monstrous.
Kool, typical install - 3-meters of $200 braided power cable, $5.30 Home Depot wall socket, 75ft of 14ga single strand romex,to $10.50 15A Home Depot circuit breaker. Makes a lot of sense.
@@Bassotronics I just picked up a 2nd hand BT speaker, the little 3" full ranges actually play quite well when with a bass heavy song. It's fun, fills a room well enough . I do have a proper stereo too :)
The people that complain about "audiophile" being snake oil can't hear the difference between different piano makers. There is a huge sound difference Steinway, Yamaha, Bosendorfer pianos that the skeptics don't hear in the same way they can't hear the differences in audio equipment. Everyone has different levels of sensitivity to sound, just like everyone's vision is different, some need glasses some are sensitive to bright light some have better night vision. I have very sensitive hearing and some think it's a good thing but finding audio equipment that sounds pleasing to me is difficult and usually expensive, this is not so good.
@@captainflapjack7100 I agree. he speaks of a known reality about musical instruments, and then uses those facts to justify his beliefs about electricity through wire, which is a completely different subject . he seems to not be aware of how human hearing works or that recorded music is only an illusion of a past event. trying to create reality from illusion will have him churning his equipment endlessly. Some people enjoy the chase . I resist public statements of ignorance , preferring insight , when possible. I don't expect people to be experts , but it would be better if all audiophiles knew a little about the basic laws of electricity and how human hearing is a subjective, not objective, process .
Doesn’t answer the question about the home wiring not being “braided”. Even admitted the interconnects aren’t braided. I used to be an audiofile, but as I got older (and still live my high-if equipment I bought 20 years ago) I realised it was a money-pit of mostly lies. Yes, good quality equipment is a good investment, but a super expensive power cable plugged into a home outlet is not logical. It’s someone selling something that’s not needed. It’s lies to say it sounds better, it’s electronically impossible. Any cable that’s kept away from other sources of interference will perform.
Do you braid the cable from the back of the wall outlet to the power station also ?......... Maybe it works from a regenerator to a component, but not from the wall outlet.
@@boomertsfx1 an astute obsession, do you understand that the ac that is carried by transmission lines bears little resemblance to what comes from an ac outlet in your home?
An audio prof who systematically confuses inductance with capacitance doesn't add great validity to everything he says. For the note: separate conductors in parallel add capacitance to the cable, while coils from the same conductor and inductance.
I would apply the known science of human hearing and electronics before spending money in ignorance. power cords do not deliver any audio information, despite what this guy says about high frequencies. it only delivers power to run the equipment's own internal power supply, which then processes the electricity to run the device. the entire idea that the wall electricity will somehow pass into the audio signal ignores that equipment is not powered directly by wall current, but by a dedicated internal power supply A guy that supposedly designs electronic equipment knows this. that he chooses to butcher his reputation with snake oil products is his business. I used to be very interested in this guys products, even subscribed to the newsletter. I now question his credibility and concern for the audio consumer.
By that logic wouldn't you already have inductance resistance in the electrical supply between the fuse box and the wall outlet ? This being the case a braided cable should have minimal effect since the issue has already been created in the wall. As long as you're not running super long cables. Maybe you should just hard wire the power amps directly to the fuse box through conduit.
better directly power from a dedicated generator/power plant😀 no, this is still not enough. audiophiles will tell you the differences between coal power, hydropower, solar power and nuclear power😂
@@czh998 I don't know about magic sound differences between coal power, hydropower, solar power and nuclear power, but time of the day seems to make noticeable difference to some people on same locations: Why HiFi systems sound better at night ruclips.net/video/ydkIi6zF2Kk/видео.html
@@czh998 if you think you hear something, that is your reality, the brain is incapable of recognizing error, that's why dreams seem real , and people see ghosts only in dim light where information is incomplete, never in daylight. and the ghosts always wear clothes, strangely enough.
When there is one thing that I hate is when audiophiles talk about huge differences. If there is a huge differences then I guess you hear it right away and the difference if obvious like changing a pair of bad speakers to a pair of good speakers. And now you, Paul, tell us that with using PS audio amps and PS audio power generators those braided power cables make a huge difference? Really?
Yes. Your power is audio. It is a sine wave, probably 50Hz and ridiculously massive amplitude like 120V 200A. Imagine a speaker capable of making that 50Hz sine wave. Build one, plug it into the wall directly. You don’t need an amplifier then! All amplifiers use this incoming wave in combination with source signals to combine the source audio wave and the AC power wave (yay for diodes) and output a higher amplitude wave. If the source signal is squared anywhere (for example by the back flow EMF of an AC motor like a fridge or fan, this square becomes a part of the output and introduces harmonic distortion at all harmonic frequencies - this known as constructive interference. Very high quality amplifiers clean the power wave up before using it. This is why they can achieve higher amplitude outputs without harmonic distortion. PS Audio amps are no different. You’ll still benefit from a clean incoming sine wave. Whether you need a braided cable or not really depends on how distorted your power source is - only so much cleaning the switching power supplies can do. The rest is up to good old physics.
I agree that there's a problem with some audiophiles and nuanced language. A huge difference is something that should be immediately apparent to anyone that hears it, and the difference between very different speakers is something that falls into this category as that's by far the most diverse part of the chain (if we leave the room out of it). When you use such words for something with such subtle differences that cables bring you are automatically seen as shady. Those that feel that cables certainly do make a difference should think that you're overcompensating with your wording, which comes across as dishonest, and those that don't believe cables make a difference as long a they are properly made will dig their heels in even further and think those that speak positively about cables are just hyperbolic liars. Whatever the case the language hurts your position towards any but those that also use such misleading statements. Nuance is very important. Audiophiles tend to understand that when it comes to audio so it shouldn't be too hard to grasp the same concept for communication. If you're fine with calling a difference between good power cables huge it's like saying that it doesn't matter if the bass in your system is really bloated, you can still hear what music is being played.
@@dylanboekelman1471 how often do you repeat that nonsense? There is no AC at all after the power supply - please shut up when you don't have the slightest clue
I guess all the pros running standard xlr and such to make the source material are wrong and somehow a power cable will make up for the thousands of feet of power wire before it gets in your house.
Braiding wires will reduce capacitance due to less surface area coupling. It will also minimize the loop area as well as varying the interception angle for stay magnetic fields to coupling. Smaller loop area leads to lower inductance. It is beneficial to use cable with low impedance, especially with short duration high current pulses rich in harmonics derived from the full bridge rectified capacitor power supplies used in audio amplifiers with poor power factor. That BHK600 has a tone of capacitors in the power supply that needs huge current peaks to top them up as the power is drawn off the mains, especially at 110V in USA. Your feeder cables in the building will also need to be low impedance. You defiantly will hear a big difference with a resolving amplifier on power supply cable choice.
The hair doesn’t stand up on my neck when people start saying they firmly believe in snake oil. Slightly annoying perhaps but if anything I feel sorry for people who are so easily influenced by the power of suggestion. If I spent a fortune on a stupid power cable I’d want to believe it makes a difference too but fortunately I have enough electrical knowledge to know that it doesn’t. Therefore I would never be fooled into actually spending money on such nonsense. I’ll stick to system upgrades that actually do make a difference. Call me crazy 🤪
Don't tell the audiophiles how the cables in the wall looks. If you power cables makes a difference your power filter sucks. I could see absurd high capacity caps in power supplies make a difference a cleaner more effortless sound with very stable power rail voltages.
That's not true. Just breaking down the concept of conductance would prove that wrong. Freebie power cables given to you by the manufacturer have 24 gauge wires per conductor and are barely shielded as well as having little to no geometry. Sure, they conduct electricity and follow the most basic spec to ensure your component turns on and functions at its most rudimentary level. Performance can and will suffer if that component wants to draw more power quickly, but cannot because the cable has too much impedance. A more robust cable that allows for more electrical passage , with lowered impedance, can provide power instantly and vanish that power just as instantly. That gives you the deepest black noise floor and the most dynamic performance from your equipment. Unless, one's equipment is sub-par and not very good as resolving dynamic and detailed sounds.
On the subject: braiding and twisting cables is only effective when connecting balanced circuits that can reject common-mode interference, for connecting other types of circuits its useless.
Dear guys...just for info, in general, given two conductors, if we decrease the distance between them we lower the inductance but increase capacitance (Mr. McGowan said the opposite...error). To lower capacitance we must increase distance. Braiding or twisting works if both wires have the same impedance respect to ground. In unbalanced single ended twisting does not reduce common mode noise. Our home electrical system also is not balanced usually, so the same apply. Also, the ultimate meters of power cable matter 'cause everything has a sonic signature, the same cheap electrical wiring in the wall. It's a question of materials and their sonic signature, not a question of capacitance, inductance. If You change the power electric cables in the wall for ones with better copper, lower gauge and high quality insulators, You will listen a strong difference. As always, the audio system must be balanced and the ears of the owner must be good.
Sure twisted pair reduces interference in data cables.... But it's stupid for power cables. I guess out of sight out of mind for people thinking the last few feet of power delivery being braided would help anything.
@Douglas Blake no you can hear the difference that using different cables makes. I don't mean speaker wire, I have tried mains cable, industrial armoured cable and a selection of others all have a different sound.
If parallel wires act as inductors (BTW always thought they act as capacitors) and inductors filter out high frequencies, isn’t that a good thing? Ultimately you’d want a pure 50Hz signal.
@Douglas Blake I just hate it when "experts" like you don't understand simple concepts. Or maybe you now you do understand now but have too much pride to admit that you misspoke. Suck it up, just say you were wrong in the way you described how the filter works. Each section of a passive 2-way filter has equal access to the full signal, one filters out the highs while the other filters out the lows. There is no "hand off." The audio "crossover" point is the result.
Everything you do or buy will make a difference, that's physics for you. The question is though, will you hear it? But.......how good (and expensive) must your set be, how good of a recording and how good must your ears and room be? To i.e. hear a difference between the same cable being braided or not? Personally i never heard ANY difference from powercables on my 12.500 euro set. Speaker cables yes, interlinks yes, power cables nothing.
A voice of reason in the darkness. Yes it is physics, I've been arguing with someone about why a power cord cannot make any audible difference. Many "audiophiles" are very blinded to physics. Plus he keeps telling me to do a listening test, which I have and never heard a diff. As you said, interconnects, speakers yes. When I told him I had a friend that owned a hi end store (GNP audio video in Pas.) He proceeded to tell me I was lying. He started getting rude and started name calling, wow. Did many listening tests there of many cords on diff very hi end stuff. Plus listening is not the most reliable (our brain!). You can listen to the same system under the same conditions 2 diff times and it can sound diff because our perception changes a lot. I needed to see someone who understands. I'm beginning to see why they are called "flat earthers".
@@bradt.3555 What really set me off is that i can borrow speaker cables, from a proper store, but when i asked to borrow speaker cables, it wasn't possible...... If it really works, fine. Better then fine. But so far, no joy.
What about that tens of meters of parallel cable that are in the wall..... Why does that last 2-3 meters outsider the wallmake alll the difference? Would like to hear a proper explanation for that!
The water delivered to your bathroom traveled for miles, and yet you use a shower head for the last few inches. Better power cords perform a similar function.
Is it possible that I hear less bass in some songs after getting better power cables? My thinking is maybe I have better dynamics and therefore the levels are more accurate and at times that means it actually has less bass.
I got a feeling Paul mixed up Capacitance and Inductance in this one. Every wire will have an inductance, placing a signal/power and a return parallel to each other over a long run will lower the effective inductance, but increase the capacitance between those wires. This is the idea behind transmission lines. Braided cables would have more effective inductance, but significantly less effective capacitance. Like with all things electronics, comes down to impedance matching to get every last percent out of a system.
All of this might make some sense IF the 'quality' of the mains waveform entering the AC inlet on your equipment mattered ONE IOTA. It doesn't however, so don't waste your time ! The AC waveform can be distorted to hell (50/60 Hz supplies are often of around 2.5% total harmonic distortion to begin with) and regularly contain all sorts of conducted and radiated noise from various appliances, from 'inductive kick-back' that results from load switching to conducted interference from thyristor/triac light dimmers to RF picked up from large power radio transmitters. Far from 'pure' in the first place ! It's also connected via the cheapest copper (sometimes aluminium) that the power utility could buy and usually a fairly crappy connector of dubious merit (esp in the USA). Once it goes through a mains transformer, is rectified and then 'filtered' to make some approximation of DC (which *IS* what happens) any idea of the 'purity' of the original AC power is simply irrelevant and nonsensical. Even more nonsensical in a switching type power supply where it's rectified, stored, turned into squarewaves, rectified once more and stored again ! The idea that the last few feet of cable attaching your equipment to the wall socket COULD make any difference is pure MADNESS too. Remember it's NOT the *AC* that powers the electronics . The electronics runs from *DC* ! It *IS* true that creating very 'pure' *DC* from the power supply *DOES* make a difference, often quite significantly so. My own 'best' power supplies produce around 50 *MICROVOLTS* of audio band noise ONLY. A lot of professional audio uses remote DC power supplies so that the line frequency AC doesn't even enter the equipment. But the *AC* itself is *ENTIRELY* unimportant It matters not one jot !
Another theoretical response from a guy who has not tried an A-B comparison. In theory, you may be correct. In real life, in a quality Hi-Fi system, you are 110% WRONG. If you have a quality system and are using the cheap factory power cords, then you should take the time to try a set of braided power cords and hear if they do make a difference or improvement. Until you do so, you are just another keyboard warrior wasting bandwidth with your unintelligent opinions. I have done the A-B comparisons with my system and there was a noticeable difference. FYI, you don't need to spend thou$and$ on power cords. There are very good ones available for under a hundred that offer the same improvements in sound.
@Graham Stevenson: Please list the power cables that you used in your listening test, to conclude that power cables make no difference. Please also list all of your stereo's components that were used in your listening test (speakers, amps, pre-amp, DAC, transport, phono-amp, tone-arm, cartridge, etc), and room treatments. As to: "The idea that the last few feet of cable attaching your equipment to the wall socket COULD make any difference is pure MADNESS too" Remove your shower head. It is MADNESS to believe that water that traveled for miles would make any difference once it reaches your bathroom when using a show head.
So are you worried that unbraided power cables would eliminate high frequencies from the power cables? And then you use transformers and lots of capacitors for remove those frequencies from the power input. Strange...
@@Forollo9210 My point is the amplifier's own power supply can be a huge source of noise. Audiophiles place all this emphasis on cleaning up the incoming power, only to have the power supply chop it back up again into rectified AC that is rich with harmonics. If they have not included any sort of snubbing, there can also be copious RF as well due to the reverse recovery time of the diodes and the transformers leakage inductance.
@@Forollo9210 Now obviously this is filtered by the power supply itself via all the rail capacitors, but it means the expensive gold-plated audio greebles are useless.
There's no audio signal in a power cord. The frequency is 50 or 60Hz. So how would braided affect that part of a system since it doesn't carry audio signals affected by inductance etc..?
Why do they fine tune Formula 1 cars by feedback from a human being? To adjust and improve the performance of it in ways that their 500M USD facilities and teams cannot explain by logic, science, and data analysis.
If there is no audio in a power signal, why did you just refer to the power as a 50hz frequency, which is part of the audible spectrum? 😇 you can’t hear power, because you are an electrical being, that’s why you need a speaker - it turns the electricity into magnetism which your ears can then turn back into electricity. Amplifiers are using your 50hz signal combined with a spectral signal of audio to make it loud. You don’t need an amplifier if you just want to listen to a 50hz tone.
@@dylanboekelman1471 No, they are NOT using the 50 (or 60)Hz signal. They are doing everything they can to remove that signal. The signal is a necessary but undesired side effect of the method of power delivery.
@@Ascania AC power like speaker output doesn’t travel the same way that DC audio signals like line output do. That ‘undesired’ effect is exactly what power amplifiers utilise to drive magnets with direct AC power.
@@dylanboekelman1471 That is nonsense. Power amplifiers do not drive anythign with direct AC power. Mains AC power is rectified and smoothed before it is used. The "AC" signal on a power amplifier output derives from the input, not the mains. If you get any mains frequency mixed into your output signal then you might like it but everyone else does not care for it and tries their best to remove this mains hum from it.
No. The answer is no. Braided power cables provide absolutely no benefit in a system. Come on Paul - this isn't a faith-based pursuit, as an engineer you *know* better than this.
In guitar amps and my audio tube amps, the signal input wire inside the amp is always braided to reduce noise. And the placement of these wires is always important to reduce noise.
@@mikemullenix6956 Guitar signals. Very, very low level, and naturally perceptible for outside influences, where every millivolt can be audible. Power cables - the exact opposite. Absolutely humongous "signals" compared, huge voltage, big current. The same interferences as above will mean practically nothing. Mains power is never amplified, but technically attenuated instead, and then filtered. The noise from outside will vanish completely.
But a power cable is carrying 50-60Hz AC. Inductance (if the effect were real) would eliminate the HF noise in the power, which is actually desirable. Braiding or plaiting the cable is used to reduce noise in balanced cable-pairs. The XLR example Paul gives there where an XLR cable contains a straight run of cable is slightly questionable, as you can read here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair
$4200 for the version that goes with source components, $5200 for the high current ones. The concept of braiding might be sound, but no way in hell that these are worth the money (and couldn’t be done for a whole lot less). The argument that the amount you spend on cabling should be a certain percentage of what your total system costs is flawed- there is a point where you have the best design and materials for a given purpose and that is not related in any way to the price of your components.
The absolute hilarity of this is, Audioquest STOPPED braiding these power cables citing customer complaints about them being too stiff and AQ stating that the braiding didn't do much for the cable.
Howdy. I would think the physics is the 'braking' effect on AC running the phase and the neutral parallel to each other. The magnetic fields fight each other. The net effect is inductance. Yes. Audio gear seldom consume sine wave current. The current usually is spiky current rushes around the peaks of the sine wave. I consider it possible that the inductance hinders these rushes. The power supply is current starved at sudden demands. For experimentation I may suggest constructing a power cable using two inch spacers between the phase and neutral and using 12 gauge wires. This should, I think, greatly reduce the mutual induction. Whether this would have any relevance I do not dare to say. No way my ears at 68 and my modest gear can resolve any difference. I have regular Yamaha 2 x 70 Watt integrated and a pair of obscure Simex speakers. Best Regards.
So is the building wiring behind the wall also special braided cable? Or is it regular NMB / BX. Why does a few feet of special power cable at the end of what could be up to hundreds of feet of parallel building wire behind the walls to the distribution panel make a difference? It is a serious question.
The last mile counts more than the whole length, if no better choices. Using (multiple) solid braided coil wires is the way. Plus shielding with aluminium foils+braided aluminium shields and solid coil wires embedded in teflon coil can make happiness. Hearing is believing. Paul is right, when his top notched components (& well designed+heavy investment listening room) can demonstrate the differences but "not majority of other common casual users". Isn't he right? Most important, Paul has a pair of well trained ears, plus his professional friends and coworkers, right?
@@williamlau7179 Hey , let’s say that last mile bit is true, then having that 1, 2 or 3 ft. of fancy cable still only represents 0.02, 0.04 or 0.06% of that all crucial mile. And those percentages are even rounded up!
Let's give credit where credit is due. Ray Kimber did not build wire braiding machines, he bought them, probably used which is fine. Those devices have been around since before electricity to make steel cables like on the Brooklyn Bridge. The twisting of audio conductors goes back to the 1920s if not before. Look at the analog telephone system which was largely designed in the 1930s. Every circuit uses a twisted pair. Look at CAT5 cable, strip a USB cable. Yes twisting of wires certainly benefits high end audio. But it is not some great scientific breakthrough discovered by audiophile cable manufactures. it been around since the dawn of electronics. And XLR cables are most certainly made with braided wires, at least in the professional arena.
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio I saw pictures of them on one of his marketing brochures. Unless he hired a large machine shop with casting capabilities I don't see how he could have built them. Now perhaps he modified OEM machines? That seems more of a possibility.
You say 'Ray Kimber did not build wire braiding machines'. This makes all the rest of your comment invalid because you do not know what you are saying is true - you are either guessing or making it up as you go so there's no point in anything you say
braiding cables has been known to work for ages... just look at every other old tube guitar amplifier from the 50s and 60s it reduced noise and hum back in the day just like they do today! They would not bother doing it otherwise.
No use for mains power cables though. Which is the topic of this video... Nobody is using braided power cables in any application but snake oil audio fool audio..
I still use a short run of Kimber PBJ cable from my preamp to amplifier. It is the best sounding reasonably priced cable I have ever heard and I have no reason to replace it.
hahahaha. It so happens that no engineer understands that. Just Paul and the pockets of cable salesmen... Paul is in bed with his buddies at Audioquest btw..
You obviously don’t understand that notwithstanding his many excellent videos, Paul has a checkered record of dubious cable related videos and a relationship with audio quest. For about oh, 27 videos on why cables don’t matter and why audioquest are scammers, see the Audioholics channel. Then decide who is a bonehead.
I don't understand fools throwing money at points in the chain where it don't do anything useful - invest in room acoustics or music instead of foolish cables
So im supposed to believe with all the 12 gauge wire running through the walls of my house from the main panel the last few feet from the wall to my amp is going to make and audible difference? Bologna !
Electricity, doesn't it have a frequency of 60Hz? So inductance wouldn't matter because electricity is so far away from the highs getting rolled off anyway, right? What am I missing?
And the power supplies in any devices, also designed by Paul, remove those higher frequencies as much as possible. Nobody wants high frequencies from the power lines.
Audiophiles would rather spend thousands on an inductor for their 60Hz mains than to install a whole battery system which could output DC or clean sinewave
@@RennieAsh I agree, that's the greatest stupidity of all hardcore audiophiles. Sixteen years ago I gave up fighting about wall current quality and took a leap of faith towards batteries. After solving some minor problems I remain very happy for having done this and I don't think I'll ever go back to wall-power. Perhaps for subs only, when I decide I definitely need them.
Why should this affect the audio quality if you’re using still the same power from the wall ? Behind the sockets it’s still the normal tiny powercables. Don’t think this really helps and it’s mostly your mind at this point.
Your signal is only as good as the final connector. No one is going to take the copper out of their wall and fashion it into a plug to connect it directly to equipment. If one plugs a $5000 power cable into a $1.50 Home Depot socket, they aren't going to obtain all the benefits from that expensive cable. The benefits are cumulative. Having a more robust socket ins a start, as is having a more robust power cable. Having both is superior.
Question, if I m using a Power Plant and AC is regenerated to be perfect. Do I still need to use a high end AC cord to feed the PP and from the PP to the equipments?
It must have cost a true fortune to install the audioquest dragon wiring all the way from the distribution panel, behind the walls, and into the sockets. All we're seeing is a tiny fraction of the circuit. Right?
ikr? This comes up again and again. Doesn't make sense to have $10k pure silver wire made by nude Swedish virgins when its plugging into a socket from Home Depot. But since audiophiles listen with their eyes, it doesn't matter. As long as their ego can flex, it's all good. As for the rest of us who are strictly performance oriented, I guess we need not apply.
The Audioquest power cords are what you see. The wiring in the walls is not from Audioquest. The argument is that the power is being delivered via ordinary cables in the building. So then the last few feet will make no difference. The last few feet are only continuing the delivery of standard cables in the building. Such is the case with your water delivery. Yet, you use a shower-head in your bathroom. Why bother, when the water traveled miles to get to you? The better power cables perform a similar function. When the current hits the Audioquest cables, those cables control the flow of the power into your equipment.
@@NoEgg4u I believe that speakers would serve the purpose of the showerhead in that analogy. The speakers "spray" the supply of electricity according to how they are designed. The cable is simply a carrier, a pipe, if you will. It can be made to handle more or less pressure based on its design, and if it's badly designed it will negatively affect the integrity of the FLOW, but it cannot change the chemical composition of the water.
If parallel wire serves as an inducer and filters out higher frequencies, it seems one WOULD want this type of wire to eliminate more noise transmission.
I don't get how, the current in the powercables behind the wall outlet can have one set of qualities, and the current running in the cables infront of the outlet can have another set of qualities.. It is a noisy signal. How can it be changed simply by running this noisy signal through a different cable.. ?
Because of noise generated by the equipment which is what it's feeding. In the wall the power is away from the radiated fields of the equipment and the equipment is away from the EMI radiated by the cables. Once out in the room everything changes.
This one has lost me, sorry :( Braiding for multiple conductors is the equivalent of a twisted pair for twin conductors. The purpose is to reduce the 'loop area' between conductors, and help prevent ambient magnetic field noise coupling inductively into the signal path. Not sure how this would help for the last few feet of an AC mains supply path, which only needs to be a pure 50 Hz.
Get educated man,,, Instead of chatting , there is a thousand ways to deal with this, . , no one way is the best, just different approaches,, different techniques.. No affence, but I suppose you have the best sounding system there is....
please do not DIY power wires. Stick to a safety tested and approved power wire so you don't have to worry about fires for the sake of this anti science and clearly illogical nonsense. even most boutique power cords fail to get safety approval , like those from underwriters laboratory, because a lot use shielding, which has a hard time passing the heat safety testing.
I am interested in this concept but can’t get past staring at the outlet on the wall…and what is behind it. After the power is generated at some far away power plant, transmitted to the local substation, through local lines to your street, through your panel and into wires behind your walls (all non-braided) and finally through a $2 receptacle, what difference can this last 3 feet really make? Not trying to be smart, just don’t understand the value of “stupidly expensive” cables at that point in the electricity supply chain.
I own a number of the Russ Andrews braided Kimber power cables, they make quite an improvement to both amplifiers and sources. Anyone who says otherwise has almost certainly never tried them. The benefit of the woven design and why it’s utilized, is its ability to reject RFI already around us. This is because the weave doesn’t represent a known antenna pattern. Secondly, the crisscross nature of the live/neutral wires in a mains cable for example, has a natural cancellation process of high frequency signals already picked up on the mains supply.
I have Kimber's Summit Palladian. Prior to that, Kimber's Ascent and prior to that Audioquest Z3. Just the Ascent alone, was the most dramatic increase in fidelity I have ever seen in a cable swap. Then, when I moved to the Palladian, it was even more so. After much research, I realized that it isn't that the Audioquest Z3 was a bad power cable. It was the connectors. AQ used the cheapest, low quality connector on the Z3. As you move up the chain in AQ, you see that they change the quality of the connectors at major intervals in their line up. I am convinced that if you bought an Audioquest Z3 and clipped off the connectors, then bought the Wattgate connectors and used the Z3 cable, you might have a better power cable than Kimber's Ascent. ;)
@@falcon048 I'm in the UK and Russ Andrews sells Kimber cables that are twisted, however when I checked on Kimber USA website, the cables were not twisted, but shielded only. Would you know why Kimber changed to shielded but not twisted power cables.
@@BoomerUKEngland I know their interconnects and speaker cables are all twisted/threaded. The power cable only has a standard three conductor twist you find in every power cable. The difference between the three models are first the connector and then adding the foot long, $1000 USD device that has something to do with the Standing Wave Ratio.
@@falcon048 I have Kimber power cables that are 8TC (so 8 live + 8 neutral + 1 earth) and also 4TC (so 4 live + 4 neutral + 1 earth). I can confirm the 8TC power cables have more effect then the 4TC ones, however the 4TC ones are still an upgrade over a typical cheap IEC cable.
"The benefit of the woven design and why it’s utilized, is its ability to reject RFI already around us." That's pretty much bullshit description. That braid construction seen on that power cable is not specifically good in rejecting RFI already around us. If rejecting RFI already around us would be the thing, there are many less cable constructions that do that better.
This makes no sense. Nobody is sending sound down a power cable. It's simply AC power. First I should state, you do not get inductance by running two cables in parallel. The inductance comes from the length of cable on a linear run. There are topologies where you can largely eliminate inductance, but they don't apply here and are not applicable to a power cable. Parallel cables are actually capacitively couple. Now if you do the calculations correctly, and you can hold parallel cables at a set distance, then they have something called a characteristic impedance. When they have a matching load impedance, then it acts similarly to a resistor which means that all frequencies are attenuated at much the same rate. This means that the waveform is more accurately preserved, especially over distances. I should add none of this matters at mains frequencies for providing AC power to audio equipment. At 50 or 60Hz the effects are far too small. Whilst such balanced feeder cables were once common for FM antenna attachment to tuners with a 300 Ω input resistance, there are more common arrangements, like co-axial and twisted pair cable. The former are used for very VHF and UHF TV and satellite reception with characteristic impedances of 50, 52, 75, or 93 Ω, depending on the type. Telephone cable use lightly twisted cable pairs to maintain audibility over several miles of cable, and has its own characteristic impedance of a few hundred ohms. Twisted pair data cables like Ethernet UTP have a much more tightly twisted cable and are better controlled for the range of frequencies used. There are other reasons to use twisted pair, primarily for common mode noise rejection (basically cancelling out interference on adjacent conductors). All of these are are called transmission lines, and all use the combination of the capacitance between two adjacent wires and the inductance of the wire. I recall deriving the equation in my university days. For low resistance lines it approximates the square root of the inductance divided by the capacitance over given length of cable. Characteristic impedance might play some role in audio signals, especially low level ones, but really over relatively long lengths. However, absolutely none of this has anything to do with power cables. That's for several reasons. The first is that they deliver AC power, not audio. They cannot distort any audio wave form. Secondly, there may be a few metres of ultra-expensive braided cable (or whatever you fancy) connecting the wall socket to the amplifier, but there will be dozens of metres of standard mains cable in the walls and floors of the property, not to mention all the connection to the local power supply, the nature of which will vary enormously in different locations. Third, and most important, what supplies the amplifier circuits is not the AC mains, but the DC output by the amplifier's power supply. It is the job of a good power supply to filter out all the noise that comes down the mains cable. Absolutely nobody will deny that the mains is anything but very noisy; there is a vast amount of electrical noise which comes with AC power from the huge number of devices in a modern environment superimposed over the nominally sine-wave shaped AC power. That noise will be faithfully transmitted by whatever cable you use to attach to the wall socket to the power supply. It is the job of the power supply to take that noisy input, filter it and provide as clean and stable as possible DC power to the actual amplifier circuits. In very simple set-ups, it used to be not much more than a transformer, a bridge rectifier, some large smoothing capacitors and maybe some higher frequency and, possibly, some ferrite chokes to filter out high frequency signals. In the case of expensive HiFi kit, then I'd expect an extremely high level of filtering and regulating of the DC power such that nothing short of a catastrophic AC surge will disrupt that clean DC supply to the amplifier circuits. Certainly no power cable is going to change any of that. This is not to say there aren't ways that the way AC is connected can't wreck audio. The most important is earthing/grounding arrangements. Grounding different pieces of interconnected audio equipment to different circuits can cause mains signals to be induced in the shielding and cause mains hum. Indeed, even connected to the same ground you might get that, and connecting shielding at just one and and using differential input/outputs on signal cables, especially at low levels, is highly desirable. Hence microphones, guitars and so on tend to be on XLR connectors. But there is no way the actual power cable changes any of this.
I notice a trend in the replies. The guys who have actually tried braided power cords and done an A-B comparison ALL say they are worth it. The only guys who say they do not work are the guys who have never tried. How can they say it doesn't work if they never tried an A-B comparison? Too many keyboard warriors spouting uninformed opinions that are worthless. Theoretical opinions mean nothing. What you hear from the speakers means everything. There are many power cords for under $100 that offer an audible improvement in sound. Try them, they have 30 or 60 day return guarantees.
The "snake oil" crowd (the cable deniers crowd) assert that it is the placebo effect; that people trick themselves into thinking that they hear a difference. Cables do make a difference (both interconnects and power cables). But you will never get the naysayers to change their tune. You would have a better chance at getting them to change their religion or change their political party. If you sat them down in front of a great stereo system, and had them swap the cables, they would probably be forced to admit that they really do hear the difference, and that it is not subtle (it is "in your face" better). But such demonstrations are not going to happen. A lot of their denials are based on envy. They cannot afford a quality stereo, and so they knock what they cannot afford, so as to convince themselves that they are not missing out on what is supposedly no better than what they own. They are even envious that they cannot participate in such a test (swapping stock cables for high-end cables on a $50,000 or $100,000+ stereo). I cannot afford this stuff. But I know that it works. I do not deny reality. Sure, I am a bit envious of others that own this stuff, the same as being envious of those that own Ferrari's. But I will never knock something simply because I cannot afford it. Quality equipment, of any kind, will cost more. To those that can afford it, good for them.
@@NoEgg4u , i agree with everything you said and would like to add a second reason for the naysayers. i genuinely believe there are people who *CANNOT* hear the differences. and because _they_ cant hear it... obviously, it doesnt exist! i can run faster than you. you can jump higher than me. your brother can lift more than either of us. why is it such a leap to imagine one person can hear better than the next guy?
@@Harald_Reindl and yet some how the purists fail to account for the 20 odd meters of cable that isn’t braided from the power outlet back to the main switch board. ??
I was told by several high end store salespersons to avoid braided interconnects in the 1980s and 1990s ( there were no such power cables then ). Why were they wrong?
Many high end audio salesmen lie. Many do it intentionally, many do it by giving incorrect answers due to their own incorrect opinions because they are uninformed or unaware. There are probably 1000 to 1 that have heard the improvements offered by aftermarket power cords vs those that say they didn't hear any improvement.
Avoid unshielded braided interconnects because unshielded unbalanced interconnects have poor shielding in them. Unbalanced interconnect made with unshielded twisted pair is generally a bad idea because poor shielding, some braiding styles can perform slightly better than that, but are not still good compared to a properly shielded cable. For balanced signals unshielded twisted pair is quite ok, but shielded is still better, and shielded star-quad even better. I would not bother with strange braided cable here, because not much potential to gain here and potential to loose a lot with non-ideally done braiding.
Why did they say to avoid them? Isn't it better to give things a try ? A High end Store will always have a try before you buy option - otherwise they are not High End.
@@adotopp1865 some unskilled and immoral sales people with cash problems will lie, but a person skilled enough to hold a good sales position has the tools to create both income and happy customers, while perhaps avoiding , at times, some unproductive details. often salespeople will simply repeat what was told by the factory reps during product sales training, since they are the authorities , leaving salespeople knowing little beyond what they are told. the real good product information is what they are told by customers.
it's unfailingly amazing how so many audio products are priced below market, just amazing . It's as if all the other competitors are flop business people incapable of price competition and market knowledge.
Homedepot 1.5 a foot 12 Guage is all you need and it's prebraided 3 solid core too. Hard to maneuver but better than paying hundreds eh? . Tellurium copper connectors is abundant nowadays, follow IACS standards. Solid core is always better in audio.
wouldn't having higher inductance filter out noise at higher frequencies? wouldn't rolling off higher frequencies be a good thing? 50-60hz is pretty low
Inductance is an impediment to high current rise times. That said, I'm not supporting Paul's claims here, ie., twisting in a line side cord resulting in any significance.
@Douglas Blake Agreed I'm simply speaking to the original inquiry about inductance, line side inductance... which would be an impediment to high current pulse like demands, ie., SMPS, and/or in pro audio; simultaneous kick drum and bass guitar transient, etc., whereas the duration exceeds cap reservoirs.
I think the level of cabling you need is relative to the quality of the audio equipment you need. If you run a $500 system, you don't need $5k cables... if you run a $50k system, you will probably want to go with those $5k cables.
If you live in a 300k house, you should wipe your buttocks with 10 dollar toilet paper. If you live in a 30 million dollar house, you should still wipe your buttocks with 10 dollar toilet paper. Don't buy 5000 dollar toilet paper just because your house costed more.
Cabling is at the bottom end of importance regarding hierarchy of spending. 1.a) Speakers 1.b) Room 2.) Amplification ... ... Connections Cabling My take... Granted, cabling isn't to be disregarded, just isn't as valuable of an platform for undue emphasis. (edited for spelling)
This continuing trend of PS Audio paying lip service to their buddies Audioquest in order to get their cabling for cheap is becoming too much for me to bear. I'm out of here. What a whole lot of crap. There is no application where power cables are braided. None, other than audio snake oil.
Let me give you a hint. It's highly likely that there is 12/2 or 12/3 solid Romex from Home Depot. Have you ever seen the inside of your main or sub electrical panel and the proximity of cables and breakers to one another? What's next? Audiophile circuit breakers and running dedicated braided cable from the home to where the power is generated?
@@hockeyplayer28 Indeed... power cables are wasted money... And if someone can hear the difference I don't argue I wish him the best and felicitate the vendor and producer of he cable for making easy and lots of money...
@@hockeyplayer28 also consider the other end of the recording chain. Every recording studio in the world* uses just good quality regular studio standard wire in capturing the original sound. these places are not cheap to build or update, and boutique wire , if needed, would be just another justified expense among many. * Barbara Streisand demanded a studio be rewired with about $230,000 worth of all silver wires and connectors. I haven't heard of it upsetting the recording industry or the audiophile vinyl community with results.
We twist pairs of data cables (in a LAN environment using UTP - Unshielded Twisted Pair) in an effort to reduce crosstalk - interference from one SIGNAL to the other on two adjacent wires in a cable. We care about that because there is INFORMATION being transmitted down those network cables that we don't want to get corrupted while in transmission. There is no information and no signal being transferred down an AC powerline. So, there is no "data" there to even be corrupted. So, having said that, why would you possibly care if your power cables were twisted at all if no data is there to even be put at risk of corruption? Answer: You wouldn't.
Steve Scudder, it's the cost. If they included very top-end cables the amplifiers would sell for to much, instead they include a good cable, then leave it buyers choice if they upgraded to better power cables afterwards.
That’s BS. They could spend an extra $10 to braid their own power cables. They know it makes no difference which is why they don’t ship the amps with them.
@@YuengsNwings true, if it mattered, they would be unique in the industry and dominate the market because of the clear performance advantage. the brain will tend to deflect or deny challenges to cherished beliefs. just like a smoker will say smoking only hurts the other guy, a sucker who owns expensive wiring will say there is an audible difference. And the beauty of human hearing is that it will always immediately confirm a bias , which becomes reality in a brain process without the ability of self awareness.
I have yet to find a theater, venue, or concert stage have braided power cables. I wonder why the professionals responsible for bringing us live music, rarely if ever use these esoteric techniques? Highly respected Gene DellaSala from Audioholics has tested objectively, written and commented a lot on this subject and his conclusion is the same as mine. After you get to a base point of "good enough" quality, the extra juice simply is not worth the squeeze. If you don't agree with my humble trust in experts like Gene, just let me state for the record - "I like turtles!"
Paul surely you are running that amplifier off of your "Power Plant AC Re-generators" , now in that case the Dragon power cords from the AC Re-generators to the amplifier makes sense ,But using a Dragon cord from the wall outlet to the AC-Re-generators does not make any sense ,it only needs to be of a sufficient gauge wire. With that said all audio equipment works off of a DC power supply ,now if the supply is well regulated (many aren't) and filtered with enough reserve capacity to handle large transients or bass notes then what is coming in AC wise should not make a difference.
I cannot agree more. Can't help but thinking the old rule "garbage in garbage out" would apply to the power feeding the the AC regenerators, especially when it comes to passive components. This has bothered me for a long time. Seems to me that money could be spent other places.
I am running it from the wall to the regenerator and then another from the regenerator to the equipment. If the regenerator were perfect (it is not) and if the regenerator created no electrical radiated noise (it creates a lot of downstream noise) then you would be correct.
I don't know how it works but I have made of many different types of power cables and they do all sound different,eg big solid copper increase in base at the cost of hi frequency hundreds of thin wires improvement in high frequency and mid-range lack of bass I have no idea what's going on but that's what I've experienced.
I'm open to clarification, but using braided power cable seems to conflict with the use of parallel power cables in the wall. Maybe braiding the power cable is most effective in proximity to the device?
@@boomertsfx1 i won't disagree that power supplies matter, but i have heard first hand the effect on better power cables. It's not placebo; it had an obvious and measurable difference. I don't have shitty gear either. It's not the best, but definitely not a slouch.
Ray Kimber arrived at a show once, with a power cable made from 8tc speaker cable! I can not remember how he grounded it, unless he ran a ground conductor down the center of the 8tc.
You just fueled an unhealthy obsession over power influencing sound. If the goal is clean sound, I can already see producers in the music industry laughing their asses off as they add compressed vinyl hiss and pops to tracks. Thing is, not all music is produced the same and those slight differences in frequency per song can drive an audiophile mad. “Well-designed gear doesn’t need a premium power cord priced over $100 because it has circuitry inside that can reject AC power noise.”
Please list the power cables that you used in your listening test, to conclude that power cables make no difference. Please also list all of your stereo's "Well-designed gear" that you used in your listening test (speakers, amps, pre-amp, DAC, transport, phono-amp, tone-arm, cartridge, etc), and room treatments.
@Duranarts: 24 hours later: 2nd Request: Please list the power cables that you used in your listening test, to conclude that power cables make no difference. Please also list all of your stereo's "Well-designed gear" that you used in your listening test (speakers, amps, pre-amp, DAC, transport, phono-amp, tone-arm, cartridge, etc), and room treatments.
@@NoEgg4u Forget it. No one is ever going to submit to any tests because of a few reasons: 1) They don't have the money to buy the various products. 2) They are scared that after the costs and time, they'll be proven wrong Besides, no test is ever going to be valid for a very simple reason. There is no established, agreed upon control. On top of that, even if there was an agreement on a control system, that system will operate differently in different environments. So, until a super rich person decides to build a facility where audiophiles can come and make tests on a system and environment that is agreed upon 100% as a control, we will never put this debate to rest. :(
@@falcon048 Even if a rich person did so, some naysayers will still cry shenanigans. They will claim that some slight-of-hand is going on, etc. There will never be, and should never be, an agreed upon control, because we all have different tastes (so it cannot ever really be agreed upon). But any truthful person will confirm that they hear the improvements that accompany better power cords, on all but crappy stereos. And although this conversation will never end, we should never let the trolls make an inch of progress. Never back down to bullies. Never let the inmates run the asylum. Never let those, that never did a listening test, spew misinformation. If they cannot do a listening test, then they should not assert that they know what is what. I never declare XYZ in a video about things I do not know. People that do that are inconsiderate and arrogant.
@@NoEgg4u I used to be skeptical of power cables until I was in the market to start acquiring them. I had the biggest and most dramatic gains in sound quality than I ever did upgrading interconnects and speaker wire. As a result however, I no longer believe that "crappy" equipment is incapable of being affected by the quality of connections and power; especially power. I was running a quirky system on my computer that all the "audiophiles" pissed at because I spent 10 times more on the back end than I did on the speaker system. The results were unbelievable. So much so that every one who listened to it was blown away...first by the incredible sound...and then the incredible price tag ;). I had the Audioengine A2+ paired with their S8 sub. By itself it's a reasonable system. However...I was running Audioquest's NRG Edison socket, with PS Audio's Noise harvester. Then coming out of that through Shunyata Research's Reference Delta v2 XC and into Shunyata's Venom V16 power distributor. That's already $3200. But it powers everything. The speakers, the sub, the PC running the music, etc. Going into the A2+ was Kimber Kable's Summit Palladian. Yes, a $1400 power cable going into a tiny speaker that cost about $280. Then I loomed the whole thing in Synergistic Research's Foundation line. No one would have ever thought to build a system like that. For $280, the A2+ was an engineering masterpiece. A small AB class amp that could push 22Khz to 65Hz. The sound quality was intense, clean, clear, musical, holographic. I later upgraded to Audioengine's HD6 to get a more full and rich mid-range and mid-bass. With all that power back end, this speaker system is still thirsty and hasn't quite attained the the sound glory its teeny-tiny brother was capable of. :( I think I have to upgrade the main interconnect and the power cable; it's a future project to be sure. :)
What I like to know is what is the "hudge" difference, improvement using these cables compared to standard power cables? What happen to the sound? More transparent, clean? Does it alter frequency response?
I run a 10/3 AWG dedicated circuit for my system although I only use one leg for the digital end and the other for the analog end of my amplification. Nice to know the natural braiding of the 4 wires (including ground) have some other benefit! Am curious to know now if the metal armor on the wire is beneficial or not with regards to inductance or shielding.
stick this here because it keeps getting failed to post! yes but you need an RF rejection filter on interconnect and speaker cables to reject 100,000kHz-1mhz getting onto the cable, this is quite simple a capacitor or 2 and resistor. you can read about it on dnm designs. they sell little boards go into your interconnects rca plugs and your amplifier to speaker cable. this was common practice with valve amplifiers years ago and somehow got lost in solid state. tell me you can see it.. nobody's reply so it looks like it's blocked?
It's been my experience that anomalies in power distribution are rarely, if ever, a result of something local. Like your home or apt. I do recommend one of the PS Audio Power Regen's. You share a common distribution transformer with your neighbor(s). They could be running an old old (3-ton) air conditioning unit with a failing motor. Old multi-unit buildings with common utilities can be horrible. I could go on and on. Think hard. How really old is the residence your living in. Built in the 1950's? A $3000. 3-meter modular power cord is not going to fix that.
@@jctai100 Note that if you have a long run in a residence likely there are buried and/or hidden junction boxes. Sometimes several of them. And the wires in those boxes are wire nutted together. Sometimes many wires. Also look carefully for aluminum wiring. That was very common in housing construction in the 50's. Very dangerous and should be immediately replaced. A $3000 multibraided modular power cord won't fix that either.
It seems like you would want to roll off the high frequencies as that's usually interference on an AC line due to harmonics and other interfering devices. Great explanation of the breeding though. I have seen XLR cables that are straight through I have also seen XLR cables with the two conductors twisted and I have even seen XLR cables with two twisted pairs. Thanks for at least acknowledging that there is some science to it and will come back to the snake water later LOL.
Paul, I'm a little surprised you didn't really answer the question regarding braiding and POWER CABLES, which is primarily the 60Hz hum and reducing EMI. You could have also mentioned the use of an isolating transformer, since we are on the subject of AC POWER.
I am sorry that didn't come across as I tried to point out how noise is lowered by the act of braiding. However I am not sure what you mean by lowering 60Hz hum. I do not believe that happens.
Hi thank you for the very interesting video as usual. Speaking of noise coming along the mains I wonder if a better design/execution of the power supplies inside the units (amp/preamp) like adding filters and so on can have a similar effect. I see for instance a lot of mains filter devices I do not know anything about their actual effect by the way Kind regards, gino
most filters now-a-days are there to prevent that device from putting noise back onto the mains, not so much for filtering the noise coming in. Of course they do, just not generally why they are there.
If the power cables used make a difference in the audio system's sound, where exactly is that coming from? Someone previously observed ( and I have seen this countless times) that the INTERNAL wiring in amplifiers, speakers, DACS, just about every piece of audio gear made are much smaller and simpler construction. Not to mention the many feet of unshielded Romex running through a house. Not sure a short length of floobydust wire will actually change anything except one's perception. And perception is everything, I guess. Shielding, and the appropriate low capacitance, Inductance and resistance in a cable pretty much describe the issue. The rest is just someone interested in $$$$.
It's not coming from the Floobydust cable It's what is not been taken away obviously . The Audiophile Cable is not additive process , It is a negative reduction philosophy. I have done many AB tests and came up with a negative result thereby proving the negative reduction being heard. I am no fool, and will only part with huge sums of money when I am unaware of it.
Is your power supply braided within the walls then? Or from the local transformers to your property? Or from your your local transformers back to the power station. Its just a guess but I'm thinking that you have spent hundreds if not thousands on on just the last few feet in the run.
@@falcon048 Are those braided wires in the video shielded? I was under the impression that they were each insulated but unshielded and connected to line, neutral, and ground. Obviously, the AC cables from the outlet to the service panel would have to be re-run with new wire, but I don't think braiding them would improve anything.
@@Harald_Reindl Does a water filter in the last few feet of your water supply affect the quality of water? Same principle applies. I know, it doesn't make sense, but I've built my own power cables, (cause I can't afford crazy priced cables) and they did change the sound. Dynamics improved and bass output was more powerful. I do agree, they aren't worth the price, that's why I built my own. Not even that hard to do.
Have you ever seen one of those water filters used in many 3rd world countries? Water goes in the filter brown and comes out clear and ready to drink at the other end. The same idea here.
The power cable is the first section of cable, the twisted design is helping to filter EMI and inductance that came before. It's closeness is similar to those ferrite rings you see of DC power cables, they fit the ferrite ring very close to the actual device (plug end).
Because an amplifier can only operate with what it is given. If you can filter noise from the socket to the amp, the amp won't have to waste performance trying to clean your signal.
@@falcon048 "the amp won't have to waste performance trying to clean your signal" is pure nonsense - the power supply is supposed to produce clean DC power no matter what
Someone please explain how power cables benefit from braiding. The AC gets rectified and smoothed - what get to power the amp should be pure DC. If cables degrade the signal, why don’t we use batteries?
@@geocarey Graham Bell invented twisted cables so phone singles could be carried over USA that should be enough proof twisting cable reduces EMI and inductance.
@Douglas Blake Except with HDMI, twisting various cables as specific intervals allows for faster speeds of data transfer. So, twisting has a benefit beyond EMI.
@Douglas Blake Using twisted pairs with balanced signal source and destination can reduce a lot of the co-interference with adjacent twisted pairs, outside noise picked to the signal and signal radiated from the cable. Building the twisted pair with tight tolerances (wire copper thickness, insulation thickness, insulation material, consistent distance between wires all the time, consistent number of twists per meter) can produce a transmission path with constant impedance for the signals, which benefits the quality of transmission of fast and high frequency signals. If you use twisted pair with unbalanced signal connections, many of those those wire twisting benefits are very greatly reduced.
So is the AC feed throughout the building braided? Or does the last 3-4 feet of an expensive braid negate any issues with standard building regs wiring?
How do the wires in the wall sound? They are solid and not braided. Does the braiding at the last couple feet bring back all those lost sounds from the power going into the power supply to be converted to something else?
1. When 2 wires run in parallel there should be capacitance between wires which might “bypass” high frequencies. The inductance is extremely low even in a coiled wire, I don’t think there is much impact of inductance.
2. Inductance should play good role in power cables - we need 50 Hz only on the power inlet, inductance can reduce high-frequency noise. That’s why we put ferrite rings on the cable and use inductors in the power sources of devices.
Congratulations on the new speakers they look fab..
What I believe to be true makes little to no difference in this world, but here it goes: folks like Paul McGowan and Danny Ritchie at GR Research say similar things about cables. They both have systems that are very carefully set up, in rooms that are treated. I followed Paul's speaker placement tips, and those of Ron at New Record Day, in order to get the most out of my system. Now I hear things I have never heard before, and my system compared to theirs is laughable. I can hear a difference between speaker cables now; I could not hear it as well before. It went from marginal to significant. I will add that I have compromised hearing on my right ear, and I can still hear it well enough. I'm not willing to write off anything, as I believe everything matters. Rather I'd like to keep an open mind until I'm put in a position where I can hear it for myself.
I think you make a really good point here about hearing a difference. You shouldn't pay for anything YOU can't hear a difference with.
@@chrisgoodson9312 Absolutely agree.
You make a good point, Paul's system has been carefully engineered and the room has been specifically treated. Many people don't have that option as most people didn't have their house built from the ground up with the concept of having a sound room installed.
@@chrisgoodson9312 true, but the bitch about hearing is that it is so willing to create reports to satisfy expectations. It didn't evolve in a way to be useful to audiophiles, except for subjective pleasure. It is simply incapable of the error free reports that fans of exotic wiring cite as evidence justifying the purchase decision.
Almost every power cord that you buy is twisted at least. If you take a cheap computer power cord and cut the end off you will see this. Same with s.o. cord, even some nm cable is built this way. Also, when your power reaches your equipment it is changed from AC to DC power. DC power has a completely different characteristic than AC. The transformer and capacitors do most of the filtering you need. I do think that keeping as much noise out of the system as possible is a good idea but to spend thousands of dollars on power cables is ridiculous
you just explained it better than the guy in the video
Well said. I was a disbeliever until I tried building my own power cables and heard the difference. Equally impactful as interconnects IME.
I followed a recipe from VH Audio. I use 12 gauge semi solid conductors. The hot and neutral are a twisted pair with a fairly tight twist. The safety ground is wrapped around that pair in the opposite direction at one twist per foot. Then good copper based plugs. They work well reducing noise and bringing out bass slam. And yes, I have no explanation how this helps when there is 30 feet of 14gauge nomax running from the outlet to the breaker box. Makes no sense but it is easy to hear. I have had others come to my room with their amp same design as mine. After wondering why mine sounded so much better I said try my power cord on your amp. Bam. All of a sudden it woke up from it's slumber.
Aren’t the 15-20 amps power cables in the wall in parallel from the power panel to the outlet and introducing inductance? Does braiding the cables from the power outlet to the amp really makes such an improvement in front of that?
@@joezunenet Absolutely... It makes no sense, but the impact on sound is clear. I could imagine that if you had heavy gauge braided cables from the panel it might make a difference. I have 400 amp service to the house and the conductors to the transformer are the size of your finger. Then plain ol 14AWE to the outlet.
@@user-od9iz9cv1w I think you’re right, I just found online that the inductance is inversely proportional to the size of the wires. So either you get large wires, or you braid them.
don't kid yourself. The room is magnitudes more of an influence on the sound than a three foot power cord and questionable theories, so any DIY is better applied there.
I trust the do it yourself power wire hasn't burned down your house in the years since this was posted. the reply was just an attempt at common sense, often not of great critical concern when men pursue hobbies.
Thank for this video. I am just wondering one thing if you could please elaborate on it as it does not add up at all for me. One can have braided cables for thousands of dollars, however in ones walls there are normal - mostly cheap - electrical parallel cables, which you could probably buy miles of for the price of the cable in this video. So from a bigger perspective, the power flows from the power station, trough the grid, to your house, then trough the walls of your house, to the power outlet, then finally to a super expensive turbo cable for let's say 2 meters. So how does it makes any difference, adding better cable at the very end of the electrons route? I understand that using worse power cable than in the walls, might have negative impact, but I don't understand how using better power cable than what one has in walls can improve anything. Please explain
That's why the term "Snake Oil" and overpriced cables have become synonymous.
Yeah, it's just snake oil. Even Paul himself said in a different video about I think XLR Y-Splitters that it does not matter for that little length of cable to use a Y-Splitter, in the grand scheme of things that Y-Splitter is about the same length as the power cables from the power plant to your amp :) So he is even contradicting himself here
@@rafajrichard I'm analytical by nature and I've been on the empirical evidence side of this debate until I listened to a highly refined system that could explicitly demonstrate the differences. I also started following Danny Richie's RUclips channel in the namesake of his company: GR-Research. I don't think there are many people in the industry more knowledgeable than Danny and he's not just a believer in quality cables potentially having audible differences theory, he's knows balls to bones the differences are detectable by the human ear. Although I would prefer to see data we could measure with electronic equipment, the scientific method is an ongoing endeavor. Assuming our current scientific understanding of sound is absolute is probably the bigger mistake. I never thought I'd end up on the other side of this debate because I lean VERY heavily towards data, but I think my conclusions were wrong about this one.
@@kenhiett5266 Audio Science Review blows Danny out the water. Over... and over.
@@CynicEidolon Good one...lol. Imagine if you said that in person while retaining a perfectly straight face. Now that would be belly laugh funny.
Didn't use a silver spoon, BUT, I did drive myself to (near) madness about ten years ago braiding up a pair of Chris Venhaus CAT5 speaker cables. While it was a finger-numbing experience I was dumbfounded on the difference it made to my system. When compared to the mid-priced Monster Cable I had been using the difference was far more than night and day. In fact, "miraculous" might be closer to the truth. Since then I braid everything I get my DIY hands on.
speaker wires are very different from a three foot section that supplies juice to be converted into the appropriate voltages to run the various circuits, lest anyone be confused.
I also made my own speaker wire, and was quite pleased at the result. they were very stiff and thick, making them hard to work with and defiantly had a home made look.
since the wife was not a stereo nut, after a while, I switched them out for a nice looking set of monster cables, the kind that everyone hates. Since any change in an electrical circuit, like speakers to amp, can effect function, I did hear a difference , and didn't love the results. fortunately , my system is pretty good. so little things like that are insignificant , and my ears then got accustomed to the change in sound, forgetting the previous experience.
@@richardelliott8352 I think you're right about any change in an electrical circuit making a difference, and I always hear it whenever I change wire---sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic. A couple of years ago I switched from a balanced Mogami Neglex 2534 Gold interconnect to the much touted Belden 8402, also balanced. The nice soundstage completely collapsed!!! Two dimensional, with everything plastered flat against the wall. It was a shock, especially since the Belden at the time was more than twice the price of the Mogami. Listened to it for several weeks, and finally put back the Mogami and the wide, deep soundstage returned. You never can tell. At least when you roll your own you can experiment for a lot less money than buying ready made.😄
All my interconnects and speaker cables are braided and I agree with Paul that I think braiding makes a big difference to the sound.
Left hand or right hand braid?
@@robertspringer9477 Ambidextrous braid!
Define "big difference"
@@robertspringer9477 An interesting question. The interconnects were constructed from one of a number of different articles that appeared in a book entitled "The SuperCables Cookbook" by Allen Wright, an Australian who founded a company called Vacuum State Electronics. As I recall, there were no explicit instructions as to how to begin the braiding so I guess the author didn't think it mattered. I used silver-coated single-stranded insulated copper wire throughout. The speaker cables were constructed from a similar scheme when a friend told me he could obtain drums of computer data cable that was being discarded because it was too short for inter-office wiring but he thought it would be fine for even quite long speaker cables. Each cable consisted of four pairs of twisted insulated wires and with my friend's help, we braided three of those cables then joined all twenty four wires together at each end. I was amazed at how good they sounded, even though I had used expensive van den Hul cables before. I'm still using those braided cables years later - and they're monstrous.
For power cables? You audiophiles stop making yourselves clowns
Kool, typical install - 3-meters of $200 braided power cable, $5.30 Home Depot wall socket, 75ft of 14ga single strand romex,to $10.50 15A Home Depot circuit breaker. Makes a lot of sense.
$200 haha, that'd actually be resonable.
@@beeker9895 good one 👍
$200? I think you forgot a zero or two
Audiophile stuff always contradicts itself in many ways.
I’m just here for education and entertainment. I’m still happy with my $10 Bluetooth speaker.
@@Bassotronics I just picked up a 2nd hand BT speaker, the little 3" full ranges actually play quite well when with a bass heavy song. It's fun, fills a room well enough .
I do have a proper stereo too :)
The people that complain about "audiophile" being snake oil can't hear the difference between different piano makers. There is a huge sound difference Steinway, Yamaha, Bosendorfer pianos that the skeptics don't hear in the same way they can't hear the differences in audio equipment. Everyone has different levels of sensitivity to sound, just like everyone's vision is different, some need glasses some are sensitive to bright light some have better night vision. I have very sensitive hearing and some think it's a good thing but finding audio equipment that sounds pleasing to me is difficult and usually expensive, this is not so good.
If you're "hearing" "audiophile" power cables, it's not because of your "sensitive hearing"
@@captainflapjack7100 I agree. he speaks of a known reality about musical instruments, and then uses those facts to justify his beliefs about electricity through wire, which is a completely different subject . he seems to not be aware of how human hearing works or that recorded music is only an illusion of a past event. trying to create reality from illusion will have him churning his equipment endlessly. Some people enjoy the chase . I resist public statements of ignorance , preferring insight , when possible. I don't expect people to be experts , but it would be better if all audiophiles knew a little about the basic laws of electricity and how human hearing is a subjective, not objective, process .
Logical fallacies employed by this argument:
- Strawman
- Faulty Analogy
Doesn’t answer the question about the home wiring not being “braided”. Even admitted the interconnects aren’t braided. I used to be an audiofile, but as I got older (and still live my high-if equipment I bought 20 years ago) I realised it was a money-pit of mostly lies. Yes, good quality equipment is a good investment, but a super expensive power cable plugged into a home outlet is not logical. It’s someone selling something that’s not needed. It’s lies to say it sounds better, it’s electronically impossible. Any cable that’s kept away from other sources of interference will perform.
Do you braid the cable from the back of the wall outlet to the power station also ?......... Maybe it works from a regenerator to a component, but not from the wall outlet.
Hahaha No its not. its only a few feet that matter lol (sarcasm)
It works😉
Even before Kimber, AT&T was twisting pairs for 100 years.
For DC power.... Not AC
@@boomertsfx1 an astute obsession, do you understand that the ac that is carried by transmission lines bears little resemblance to what comes from an ac outlet in your home?
@@jamesrobinson9176 of course
@@boomertsfx1 and besides, I'm pretty sure each leg of 60hz that enters your house is twisted to another leg
@@jamesrobinson9176 but the fancy AC power cable to your power supply does nothing unless the PSU was designed like crap 🤷🏼♂️
An audio prof who systematically confuses inductance with capacitance doesn't add great validity to everything he says.
For the note: separate conductors in parallel add capacitance to the cable, while coils from the same conductor and inductance.
I would apply the known science of human hearing and electronics before spending money in ignorance. power cords do not deliver any audio information, despite what this guy says about high frequencies. it only delivers power to run the equipment's own internal power supply, which then processes the electricity to run the device. the entire idea that the wall electricity will somehow pass into the audio signal ignores that equipment is not powered directly by wall current, but by a dedicated internal power supply
A guy that supposedly designs electronic equipment knows this. that he chooses to butcher his reputation with snake oil products is his business. I used to be very interested in this guys products, even subscribed to the newsletter. I now question his credibility and concern for the audio consumer.
By that logic wouldn't you already have inductance resistance in the electrical supply between the fuse box and the wall outlet ? This being the case a braided cable should have minimal effect since the issue has already been created in the wall. As long as you're not running super long cables. Maybe you should just hard wire the power amps directly to the fuse box through conduit.
better directly power from a dedicated generator/power plant😀
no, this is still not enough.
audiophiles will tell you the differences between coal power, hydropower, solar power and nuclear power😂
@@czh998 I don't know about magic sound differences between coal power, hydropower, solar power and nuclear power, but time of the day seems to make noticeable difference to some people on same locations:
Why HiFi systems sound better at night
ruclips.net/video/ydkIi6zF2Kk/видео.html
@@czh998 if you think you hear something, that is your reality, the brain is incapable of recognizing error, that's why dreams seem real , and people see ghosts only in dim light where information is incomplete, never in daylight. and the ghosts always wear clothes, strangely enough.
When there is one thing that I hate is when audiophiles talk about huge differences. If there is a huge differences then I guess you hear it right away and the difference if obvious like changing a pair of bad speakers to a pair of good speakers. And now you, Paul, tell us that with using PS audio amps and PS audio power generators those braided power cables make a huge difference? Really?
Yes. Your power is audio. It is a sine wave, probably 50Hz and ridiculously massive amplitude like 120V 200A. Imagine a speaker capable of making that 50Hz sine wave. Build one, plug it into the wall directly. You don’t need an amplifier then! All amplifiers use this incoming wave in combination with source signals to combine the source audio wave and the AC power wave (yay for diodes) and output a higher amplitude wave. If the source signal is squared anywhere (for example by the back flow EMF of an AC motor like a fridge or fan, this square becomes a part of the output and introduces harmonic distortion at all harmonic frequencies - this known as constructive interference.
Very high quality amplifiers clean the power wave up before using it. This is why they can achieve higher amplitude outputs without harmonic distortion.
PS Audio amps are no different. You’ll still benefit from a clean incoming sine wave. Whether you need a braided cable or not really depends on how distorted your power source is - only so much cleaning the switching power supplies can do. The rest is up to good old physics.
I agree that there's a problem with some audiophiles and nuanced language. A huge difference is something that should be immediately apparent to anyone that hears it, and the difference between very different speakers is something that falls into this category as that's by far the most diverse part of the chain (if we leave the room out of it).
When you use such words for something with such subtle differences that cables bring you are automatically seen as shady. Those that feel that cables certainly do make a difference should think that you're overcompensating with your wording, which comes across as dishonest, and those that don't believe cables make a difference as long a they are properly made will dig their heels in even further and think those that speak positively about cables are just hyperbolic liars. Whatever the case the language hurts your position towards any but those that also use such misleading statements.
Nuance is very important. Audiophiles tend to understand that when it comes to audio so it shouldn't be too hard to grasp the same concept for communication. If you're fine with calling a difference between good power cables huge it's like saying that it doesn't matter if the bass in your system is really bloated, you can still hear what music is being played.
@@dylanboekelman1471 how often do you repeat that nonsense? There is no AC at all after the power supply - please shut up when you don't have the slightest clue
I guess all the pros running standard xlr and such to make the source material are wrong and somehow a power cable will make up for the thousands of feet of power wire before it gets in your house.
Braiding wires will reduce capacitance due to less surface area coupling. It will also minimize the loop area as well as varying the interception angle for stay magnetic fields to coupling. Smaller loop area leads to lower inductance. It is beneficial to use cable with low impedance, especially with short duration high current pulses rich in harmonics derived from the full bridge rectified capacitor power supplies used in audio amplifiers with poor power factor. That BHK600 has a tone of capacitors in the power supply that needs huge current peaks to top them up as the power is drawn off the mains, especially at 110V in USA. Your feeder cables in the building will also need to be low impedance. You defiantly will hear a big difference with a resolving amplifier on power supply cable choice.
The hair doesn’t stand up on my neck when people start saying they firmly believe in snake oil. Slightly annoying perhaps but if anything I feel sorry for people who are so easily influenced by the power of suggestion. If I spent a fortune on a stupid power cable I’d want to believe it makes a difference too but fortunately I have enough electrical knowledge to know that it doesn’t. Therefore I would never be fooled into actually spending money on such nonsense. I’ll stick to system upgrades that actually do make a difference. Call me crazy 🤪
Don't tell the audiophiles how the cables in the wall looks. If you power cables makes a difference your power filter sucks. I could see absurd high capacity caps in power supplies make a difference a cleaner more effortless sound with very stable power rail voltages.
That's not true. Just breaking down the concept of conductance would prove that wrong. Freebie power cables given to you by the manufacturer have 24 gauge wires per conductor and are barely shielded as well as having little to no geometry. Sure, they conduct electricity and follow the most basic spec to ensure your component turns on and functions at its most rudimentary level. Performance can and will suffer if that component wants to draw more power quickly, but cannot because the cable has too much impedance. A more robust cable that allows for more electrical passage , with lowered impedance, can provide power instantly and vanish that power just as instantly. That gives you the deepest black noise floor and the most dynamic performance from your equipment. Unless, one's equipment is sub-par and not very good as resolving dynamic and detailed sounds.
On the subject: braiding and twisting cables is only effective when connecting balanced circuits that can reject common-mode interference, for connecting other types of circuits its useless.
Dear guys...just for info, in general, given two conductors, if we decrease the distance between them we lower the inductance but increase capacitance (Mr. McGowan said the opposite...error). To lower capacitance we must increase distance. Braiding or twisting works if both wires have the same impedance respect to ground. In unbalanced single ended twisting does not reduce common mode noise. Our home electrical system also is not balanced usually, so the same apply.
Also, the ultimate meters of power cable matter 'cause everything has a sonic signature, the same cheap electrical wiring in the wall. It's a question of materials and their sonic signature, not a question of capacitance, inductance. If You change the power electric cables in the wall for ones with better copper, lower gauge and high quality insulators, You will listen a strong difference. As always, the audio system must be balanced and the ears of the owner must be good.
Does braiding reduce RFI? And/or other mains contamination?
Sure twisted pair reduces interference in data cables.... But it's stupid for power cables. I guess out of sight out of mind for people thinking the last few feet of power delivery being braided would help anything.
@Douglas Blake it's a very subtle effect
@Douglas Blake no you can hear the difference that using different cables makes. I don't mean speaker wire, I have tried mains cable, industrial armoured cable and a selection of others all have a different sound.
@Douglas Blake I don't waste any money. I haven't bought any cables for years
@Douglas Blake because of people who say all cables sound the same.
If parallel wires act as inductors (BTW always thought they act as capacitors) and inductors filter out high frequencies, isn’t that a good thing? Ultimately you’d want a pure 50Hz signal.
@Douglas Blake Says the guy who doesn't even understand how simple passive crossovers work. There is no "hand off."
@Douglas Blake I just hate it when "experts" like you don't understand simple concepts. Or maybe you now you do understand now but have too much pride to admit that you misspoke. Suck it up, just say you were wrong in the way you described how the filter works. Each section of a passive 2-way filter has equal access to the full signal, one filters out the highs while the other filters out the lows. There is no "hand off." The audio "crossover" point is the result.
Everything you do or buy will make a difference, that's physics for you. The question is though, will you hear it? But.......how good (and expensive) must your set be, how good of a recording and how good must your ears and room be? To i.e. hear a difference between the same cable being braided or not?
Personally i never heard ANY difference from powercables on my 12.500 euro set. Speaker cables yes, interlinks yes, power cables nothing.
A voice of reason in the darkness. Yes it is physics, I've been arguing with someone about why a power cord cannot make any audible difference. Many "audiophiles" are very blinded to physics. Plus he keeps telling me to do a listening test, which I have and never heard a diff. As you said, interconnects, speakers yes. When I told him I had a friend that owned a hi end store (GNP audio video in Pas.) He proceeded to tell me I was lying. He started getting rude and started name calling, wow. Did many listening tests there of many cords on diff very hi end stuff. Plus listening is not the most reliable (our brain!). You can listen to the same system under the same conditions 2 diff times and it can sound diff because our perception changes a lot. I needed to see someone who understands. I'm beginning to see why they are called "flat earthers".
@@bradt.3555 What really set me off is that i can borrow speaker cables, from a proper store, but when i asked to borrow speaker cables, it wasn't possible......
If it really works, fine. Better then fine. But so far, no joy.
What about that tens of meters of parallel cable that are in the wall.....
Why does that last 2-3 meters outsider the wallmake alll the difference?
Would like to hear a proper explanation for that!
The water delivered to your bathroom traveled for miles, and yet you use a shower head for the last few inches.
Better power cords perform a similar function.
@ Perhaps, I really don't see the analogy 🤔
@@NoEgg4u nonsense
@@Impackon he is a audiophile which implies no brain and no technical education
@@kytddjj I watched that Veratisium video as well. Still doesn't matter.
Is it possible that I hear less bass in some songs after getting better power cables? My thinking is maybe I have better dynamics and therefore the levels are more accurate and at times that means it actually has less bass.
I got a feeling Paul mixed up Capacitance and Inductance in this one. Every wire will have an inductance, placing a signal/power and a return parallel to each other over a long run will lower the effective inductance, but increase the capacitance between those wires. This is the idea behind transmission lines. Braided cables would have more effective inductance, but significantly less effective capacitance. Like with all things electronics, comes down to impedance matching to get every last percent out of a system.
All of this might make some sense IF the 'quality' of the mains waveform entering the AC inlet on your equipment mattered ONE IOTA. It doesn't however, so don't waste your time !
The AC waveform can be distorted to hell (50/60 Hz supplies are often of around 2.5% total harmonic distortion to begin with) and regularly contain all sorts of conducted and radiated noise from various appliances, from 'inductive kick-back' that results from load switching to conducted interference from thyristor/triac light dimmers to RF picked up from large power radio transmitters. Far from 'pure' in the first place ! It's also connected via the cheapest copper (sometimes aluminium) that the power utility could buy and usually a fairly crappy connector of dubious merit (esp in the USA).
Once it goes through a mains transformer, is rectified and then 'filtered' to make some approximation of DC (which *IS* what happens) any idea of the 'purity' of the original AC power is simply irrelevant and nonsensical. Even more nonsensical in a switching type power supply where it's rectified, stored, turned into squarewaves, rectified once more and stored again !
The idea that the last few feet of cable attaching your equipment to the wall socket COULD make any difference is pure MADNESS too. Remember it's NOT the *AC* that powers the electronics . The electronics runs from *DC* !
It *IS* true that creating very 'pure' *DC* from the power supply *DOES* make a difference, often quite significantly so. My own 'best' power supplies produce around 50 *MICROVOLTS* of audio band noise ONLY. A lot of professional audio uses remote DC power supplies so that the line frequency AC doesn't even enter the equipment. But the *AC* itself is *ENTIRELY* unimportant It matters not one jot !
You are 100% correct sir.
Another theoretical response from a guy who has not tried an A-B comparison.
In theory, you may be correct. In real life, in a quality Hi-Fi system, you are 110% WRONG.
If you have a quality system and are using the cheap factory power cords, then you should take the time to try a set of braided power cords and hear if they do make a difference or improvement. Until you do so, you are just another keyboard warrior wasting bandwidth with your unintelligent opinions. I have done the A-B comparisons with my system and there was a noticeable difference. FYI, you don't need to spend thou$and$ on power cords. There are very good ones available for under a hundred that offer the same improvements in sound.
Science is irrelevant...
This is a religion.
@Douglas Blake 😆😂🤣
@Graham Stevenson:
Please list the power cables that you used in your listening test, to conclude that power cables make no difference.
Please also list all of your stereo's components that were used in your listening test (speakers, amps, pre-amp, DAC, transport, phono-amp, tone-arm, cartridge, etc), and room treatments.
As to:
"The idea that the last few feet of cable attaching your equipment to the wall socket COULD make any difference is pure MADNESS too"
Remove your shower head. It is MADNESS to believe that water that traveled for miles would make any difference once it reaches your bathroom when using a show head.
So are you worried that unbraided power cables would eliminate high frequencies from the power cables? And then you use transformers and lots of capacitors for remove those frequencies from the power input. Strange...
And after the bridge rectifiers put more noise into the system than anything the powerline ever could. Strange indeed.
@@mysock351C It's a power cable, not signal. The frequency is 50 or 60Hz. There's no audio signal in the power signal of course.
@@Forollo9210 My point is the amplifier's own power supply can be a huge source of noise. Audiophiles place all this emphasis on cleaning up the incoming power, only to have the power supply chop it back up again into rectified AC that is rich with harmonics. If they have not included any sort of snubbing, there can also be copious RF as well due to the reverse recovery time of the diodes and the transformers leakage inductance.
@@Forollo9210 Now obviously this is filtered by the power supply itself via all the rail capacitors, but it means the expensive gold-plated audio greebles are useless.
There's no audio signal in a power cord. The frequency is 50 or 60Hz. So how would braided affect that part of a system since it doesn't carry audio signals affected by inductance etc..?
Why do they fine tune Formula 1 cars by feedback from a human being? To adjust and improve the performance of it in ways that their 500M USD facilities and teams cannot explain by logic, science, and data analysis.
If there is no audio in a power signal, why did you just refer to the power as a 50hz frequency, which is part of the audible spectrum? 😇 you can’t hear power, because you are an electrical being, that’s why you need a speaker - it turns the electricity into magnetism which your ears can then turn back into electricity.
Amplifiers are using your 50hz signal combined with a spectral signal of audio to make it loud. You don’t need an amplifier if you just want to listen to a 50hz tone.
@@dylanboekelman1471 No, they are NOT using the 50 (or 60)Hz signal. They are doing everything they can to remove that signal. The signal is a necessary but undesired side effect of the method of power delivery.
@@Ascania AC power like speaker output doesn’t travel the same way that DC audio signals like line output do. That ‘undesired’ effect is exactly what power amplifiers utilise to drive magnets with direct AC power.
@@dylanboekelman1471 That is nonsense. Power amplifiers do not drive anythign with direct AC power. Mains AC power is rectified and smoothed before it is used. The "AC" signal on a power amplifier output derives from the input, not the mains. If you get any mains frequency mixed into your output signal then you might like it but everyone else does not care for it and tries their best to remove this mains hum from it.
No. The answer is no. Braided power cables provide absolutely no benefit in a system. Come on Paul - this isn't a faith-based pursuit, as an engineer you *know* better than this.
In guitar amps and my audio tube amps, the signal input wire inside the amp is always braided to reduce noise. And the placement of these wires is always important to reduce noise.
@@mikemullenix6956 Guitar signals. Very, very low level, and naturally perceptible for outside influences, where every millivolt can be audible.
Power cables - the exact opposite. Absolutely humongous "signals" compared, huge voltage, big current. The same interferences as above will mean practically nothing. Mains power is never amplified, but technically attenuated instead, and then filtered. The noise from outside will vanish completely.
But a power cable is carrying 50-60Hz AC. Inductance (if the effect were real) would eliminate the HF noise in the power, which is actually desirable. Braiding or plaiting the cable is used to reduce noise in balanced cable-pairs. The XLR example Paul gives there where an XLR cable contains a straight run of cable is slightly questionable, as you can read here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_pair
$4200 for the version that goes with source components, $5200 for the high current ones. The concept of braiding might be sound, but no way in hell that these are worth the money (and couldn’t be done for a whole lot less). The argument that the amount you spend on cabling should be a certain percentage of what your total system costs is flawed- there is a point where you have the best design and materials for a given purpose and that is not related in any way to the price of your components.
The absolute hilarity of this is, Audioquest STOPPED braiding these power cables citing customer complaints about them being too stiff and AQ stating that the braiding didn't do much for the cable.
@@falcon048 🤣
WTF, 5200$? They are made from stranded copper cables, they are nothing more than 35$ jumper cables, this is hilarious.
Pure silver cables are the way to go.
Optimizes transparency and eliminates distortion to raise listening experience.
Howdy.
I would think the physics is the 'braking' effect on AC running the phase and the neutral parallel to each other. The magnetic fields fight each other. The net effect is inductance. Yes.
Audio gear seldom consume sine wave current. The current usually is spiky current rushes around the peaks of the sine wave.
I consider it possible that the inductance hinders these rushes. The power supply is current starved at sudden demands.
For experimentation I may suggest constructing a power cable using two inch spacers between the phase and neutral and using 12 gauge wires. This should, I think, greatly reduce the mutual induction.
Whether this would have any relevance I do not dare to say. No way my ears at 68 and my modest gear can resolve any difference. I have regular Yamaha 2 x 70 Watt integrated and a pair of obscure Simex speakers.
Best Regards.
So is the building wiring behind the wall also special braided cable? Or is it regular NMB / BX. Why does a few feet of special power cable at the end of what could be up to hundreds of feet of parallel building wire behind the walls to the distribution panel make a difference? It is a serious question.
You heard him say how "crazy expensive" those were, right? Those guys are in it to make money. That's why he said they sound better.
We have a BINGO.
The last mile counts more than the whole length, if no better choices. Using (multiple) solid braided coil wires is the way. Plus shielding with aluminium foils+braided aluminium shields and solid coil wires embedded in teflon coil can make happiness. Hearing is believing. Paul is right, when his top notched components (& well designed+heavy investment listening room) can demonstrate the differences but "not majority of other common casual users". Isn't he right? Most important, Paul has a pair of well trained ears, plus his professional friends and coworkers, right?
@@williamlau7179 Hey , let’s say that last mile bit is true, then having that 1, 2 or 3 ft. of fancy cable still only represents 0.02, 0.04 or 0.06% of that all crucial mile. And those percentages are even rounded up!
@@williamlau7179 that's just people making excuses so that they can hide behind the "I'm rich" wall.
But 80% of the cable is behind the wall and not braided (and running parallel conduction like he says) so how does it matter?
Look at the amount of caps in that thing!
Let's give credit where credit is due. Ray Kimber did not build wire braiding machines, he bought them, probably used which is fine. Those devices have been around since before electricity to make steel cables like on the Brooklyn Bridge. The twisting of audio conductors goes back to the 1920s if not before. Look at the analog telephone system which was largely designed in the 1930s. Every circuit uses a twisted pair. Look at CAT5 cable, strip a USB cable. Yes twisting of wires certainly benefits high end audio. But it is not some great scientific breakthrough discovered by audiophile cable manufactures. it been around since the dawn of electronics. And XLR cables are most certainly made with braided wires, at least in the professional arena.
I believe this discussion is about mains power cables..
Actually, Ray built them because he could fine none that handled the wire gauge and would handle 8 at a time.
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio I saw pictures of them on one of his marketing brochures. Unless he hired a large machine shop with casting capabilities I don't see how he could have built them. Now perhaps he modified OEM machines? That seems more of a possibility.
@@andydelle4509 Ray's a pretty resourceful guy but, perhaps you're right. It's been more than 40 years. Too long for a good memory.
You say 'Ray Kimber did not build wire braiding machines'. This makes all the rest of your comment invalid because you do not know what you are saying is true - you are either guessing or making it up as you go so there's no point in anything you say
I understand that good shielding CAM make a huge difference compared to unshielded. But I dont understand those 5 cm thick cables. What for is it?
The thicker cables look much more impressive, and that leads you to expect better sound, which is the most effective way of making it sound good.
braiding cables has been known to work for ages... just look at every other old tube guitar amplifier from the 50s and 60s it reduced noise and hum back in the day just like they do today! They would not bother doing it otherwise.
No use for mains power cables though. Which is the topic of this video... Nobody is using braided power cables in any application but snake oil audio fool audio..
@@razisn you really should get back under your bridge, it's not safe for troglodites out in the open you could be exposed to new ideas.
@@jamesrobinson9176 audiofool
@james robinson I'm sorry, but every electronic engineer worth its salt would tell you that it doesn't make any measurable difference. The truth hurts
@@xanderguldie lol. The truth can free your mind.
I just use Mercury 79 strand speaker cables from amp to speakers. The best sounding cables I ever used coming from QED
You said it all when you said ‘stupid expensive’!
I still use a short run of Kimber PBJ cable from my preamp to amplifier. It is the best sounding reasonably priced cable I have ever heard and I have no reason to replace it.
.Wow so many people making bonehead snarky comments on something they obviously don't understand.
hahahaha. It so happens that no engineer understands that. Just Paul and the pockets of cable salesmen... Paul is in bed with his buddies at Audioquest btw..
You obviously don’t understand that notwithstanding his many excellent videos, Paul has a checkered record of dubious cable related videos and a relationship with audio quest. For about oh, 27 videos on why cables don’t matter and why audioquest are scammers, see the Audioholics channel. Then decide who is a bonehead.
I don't understand fools throwing money at points in the chain where it don't do anything useful - invest in room acoustics or music instead of foolish cables
hahahaha Howerd, poor fellow. You are not so bright? This is just ripping of stupid people who think they are smart.
Lol....
@@lennartgosman3640 it's a correction to move money away from people which can't do anything useful with it
So im supposed to believe with all the 12 gauge wire running through the walls of my house from the main panel the last few feet from the wall to my amp is going to make and audible difference? Bologna !
Electricity, doesn't it have a frequency of 60Hz? So inductance wouldn't matter because electricity is so far away from the highs getting rolled off anyway, right? What am I missing?
nothing
Show us some data
And the power supplies in any devices, also designed by Paul, remove those higher frequencies as much as possible. Nobody wants high frequencies from the power lines.
Audiophiles would rather spend thousands on an inductor for their 60Hz mains than to install a whole battery system which could output DC or clean sinewave
@@RennieAsh I agree, that's the greatest stupidity of all hardcore audiophiles. Sixteen years ago I gave up fighting about wall current quality and took a leap of faith towards batteries. After solving some minor problems I remain very happy for having done this and I don't think I'll ever go back to wall-power. Perhaps for subs only, when I decide I definitely need them.
Why should this affect the audio quality if you’re using still the same power from the wall ?
Behind the sockets it’s still the normal tiny powercables. Don’t think this really helps and it’s mostly your mind at this point.
Your signal is only as good as the final connector. No one is going to take the copper out of their wall and fashion it into a plug to connect it directly to equipment. If one plugs a $5000 power cable into a $1.50 Home Depot socket, they aren't going to obtain all the benefits from that expensive cable. The benefits are cumulative. Having a more robust socket ins a start, as is having a more robust power cable. Having both is superior.
Question, if I m using a Power Plant and AC is regenerated to be perfect. Do I still need to use a high end AC cord to feed the PP and from the PP to the equipments?
How does Kimber's Summit Palladian power cable stack up to that Audioquest Dragon?
It must have cost a true fortune to install the audioquest dragon wiring all the way from the distribution panel, behind the walls, and into the sockets. All we're seeing is a tiny fraction of the circuit. Right?
ikr? This comes up again and again. Doesn't make sense to have $10k pure silver wire made by nude Swedish virgins when its plugging into a socket from Home Depot. But since audiophiles listen with their eyes, it doesn't matter. As long as their ego can flex, it's all good. As for the rest of us who are strictly performance oriented, I guess we need not apply.
But of course, we all know the real reason these exist. Audiophiles are gullible and have money to throw away, so the BS train just keeps on rollin'.
The Audioquest power cords are what you see. The wiring in the walls is not from Audioquest.
The argument is that the power is being delivered via ordinary cables in the building. So then the last few feet will make no difference. The last few feet are only continuing the delivery of standard cables in the building.
Such is the case with your water delivery. Yet, you use a shower-head in your bathroom. Why bother, when the water traveled miles to get to you?
The better power cables perform a similar function. When the current hits the Audioquest cables, those cables control the flow of the power into your equipment.
@@NoEgg4u I believe that speakers would serve the purpose of the showerhead in that analogy. The speakers "spray" the supply of electricity according to how they are designed. The cable is simply a carrier, a pipe, if you will. It can be made to handle more or less pressure based on its design, and if it's badly designed it will negatively affect the integrity of the FLOW, but it cannot change the chemical composition of the water.
@@NoEgg4u laughable
If parallel wire serves as an inducer and filters out higher frequencies, it seems one WOULD want this type of wire to eliminate more noise transmission.
I don't get how, the current in the powercables behind the wall outlet can have one set of qualities, and the current running in the cables infront of the outlet can have another set of qualities.. It is a noisy signal. How can it be changed simply by running this noisy signal through a different cable.. ?
Because of noise generated by the equipment which is what it's feeding. In the wall the power is away from the radiated fields of the equipment and the equipment is away from the EMI radiated by the cables. Once out in the room everything changes.
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio I guess this could be true of an inadequately designed power supply, but that would make a failed result.
This one has lost me, sorry :( Braiding for multiple conductors is the equivalent of a twisted pair for twin conductors. The purpose is to reduce the 'loop area' between conductors, and help prevent ambient magnetic field noise coupling inductively into the signal path. Not sure how this would help for the last few feet of an AC mains supply path, which only needs to be a pure 50 Hz.
Get educated man,,,
Instead of chatting , there is a thousand ways to deal with this, . , no one way is the best, just different approaches,, different techniques.. No affence, but I suppose you have the best sounding system there is....
.. Paul knows better than you, kiddo..
Long Live Paul......
quality power cables matter for smoothness!
Power cable for the dumbest on earth who pay for some copper that does NOTHING.
They are only ripped off... the dumbest people on eart.
Applying ferrite beat on power cable suppress line interference. That's better benefit for me.
For DC power supplies maybe
Even better, common-mode choke that chicken!
Why not rewire all your outlets feeding your hifi system with braided cable?
And what about the powercables that comes from the powerplant? LOLLLLL this is for the dumbest people on eart who deserve to get rid of their money.
Aaron this would be interesting to see what happens
If I buy this cable for my Keurig, will the coffee taste better?
Yes, but it's only available via monthly subscription. Please pay up.
How does a DIY ROMEX solid core power cable perform? I'm broke!
please do not DIY power wires. Stick to a safety tested and approved power wire so you don't have to worry about fires for the sake of this anti science and clearly illogical nonsense. even most boutique power cords fail to get safety approval , like those from underwriters laboratory, because a lot use shielding, which has a hard time passing the heat safety testing.
I am interested in this concept but can’t get past staring at the outlet on the wall…and what is behind it. After the power is generated at some far away power plant, transmitted to the local substation, through local lines to your street, through your panel and into wires behind your walls (all non-braided) and finally through a $2 receptacle, what difference can this last 3 feet really make? Not trying to be smart, just don’t understand the value of “stupidly expensive” cables at that point in the electricity supply chain.
Exactly...it doesn't matter. The power supply itself matters.
It's AC... so there is no ''last 3 feet''. The sound system is actually sitting in the middle of the electrical wiring system.
I own a number of the Russ Andrews braided Kimber power cables, they make quite an improvement to both amplifiers and sources. Anyone who says otherwise has almost certainly never tried them.
The benefit of the woven design and why it’s utilized, is its ability to reject RFI already around us. This is because the weave doesn’t represent a known antenna pattern. Secondly, the crisscross nature of the live/neutral wires in a mains cable for example, has a natural cancellation process of high frequency signals already picked up on the mains supply.
I have Kimber's Summit Palladian. Prior to that, Kimber's Ascent and prior to that Audioquest Z3. Just the Ascent alone, was the most dramatic increase in fidelity I have ever seen in a cable swap. Then, when I moved to the Palladian, it was even more so. After much research, I realized that it isn't that the Audioquest Z3 was a bad power cable. It was the connectors. AQ used the cheapest, low quality connector on the Z3. As you move up the chain in AQ, you see that they change the quality of the connectors at major intervals in their line up. I am convinced that if you bought an Audioquest Z3 and clipped off the connectors, then bought the Wattgate connectors and used the Z3 cable, you might have a better power cable than Kimber's Ascent. ;)
@@falcon048 I'm in the UK and Russ Andrews sells Kimber cables that are twisted, however when I checked on Kimber USA website, the cables were not twisted, but shielded only. Would you know why Kimber changed to shielded but not twisted power cables.
@@BoomerUKEngland I know their interconnects and speaker cables are all twisted/threaded. The power cable only has a standard three conductor twist you find in every power cable. The difference between the three models are first the connector and then adding the foot long, $1000 USD device that has something to do with the Standing Wave Ratio.
@@falcon048 I have Kimber power cables that are 8TC (so 8 live + 8 neutral + 1 earth) and also 4TC (so 4 live + 4 neutral + 1 earth). I can confirm the 8TC power cables have more effect then the 4TC ones, however the 4TC ones are still an upgrade over a typical cheap IEC cable.
"The benefit of the woven design and why it’s utilized, is its ability to reject RFI already around us."
That's pretty much bullshit description. That braid construction seen on that power cable is not specifically good in rejecting RFI already around us. If rejecting RFI already around us would be the thing, there are many less cable constructions that do that better.
This makes no sense. Nobody is sending sound down a power cable. It's simply AC power.
First I should state, you do not get inductance by running two cables in parallel. The inductance comes from the length of cable on a linear run. There are topologies where you can largely eliminate inductance, but they don't apply here and are not applicable to a power cable. Parallel cables are actually capacitively couple. Now if you do the calculations correctly, and you can hold parallel cables at a set distance, then they have something called a characteristic impedance. When they have a matching load impedance, then it acts similarly to a resistor which means that all frequencies are attenuated at much the same rate. This means that the waveform is more accurately preserved, especially over distances. I should add none of this matters at mains frequencies for providing AC power to audio equipment. At 50 or 60Hz the effects are far too small.
Whilst such balanced feeder cables were once common for FM antenna attachment to tuners with a 300 Ω input resistance, there are more common arrangements, like co-axial and twisted pair cable. The former are used for very VHF and UHF TV and satellite reception with characteristic impedances of 50, 52, 75, or 93 Ω, depending on the type. Telephone cable use lightly twisted cable pairs to maintain audibility over several miles of cable, and has its own characteristic impedance of a few hundred ohms. Twisted pair data cables like Ethernet UTP have a much more tightly twisted cable and are better controlled for the range of frequencies used. There are other reasons to use twisted pair, primarily for common mode noise rejection (basically cancelling out interference on adjacent conductors).
All of these are are called transmission lines, and all use the combination of the capacitance between two adjacent wires and the inductance of the wire. I recall deriving the equation in my university days. For low resistance lines it approximates the square root of the inductance divided by the capacitance over given length of cable.
Characteristic impedance might play some role in audio signals, especially low level ones, but really over relatively long lengths.
However, absolutely none of this has anything to do with power cables. That's for several reasons. The first is that they deliver AC power, not audio. They cannot distort any audio wave form.
Secondly, there may be a few metres of ultra-expensive braided cable (or whatever you fancy) connecting the wall socket to the amplifier, but there will be dozens of metres of standard mains cable in the walls and floors of the property, not to mention all the connection to the local power supply, the nature of which will vary enormously in different locations.
Third, and most important, what supplies the amplifier circuits is not the AC mains, but the DC output by the amplifier's power supply. It is the job of a good power supply to filter out all the noise that comes down the mains cable. Absolutely nobody will deny that the mains is anything but very noisy; there is a vast amount of electrical noise which comes with AC power from the huge number of devices in a modern environment superimposed over the nominally sine-wave shaped AC power. That noise will be faithfully transmitted by whatever cable you use to attach to the wall socket to the power supply. It is the job of the power supply to take that noisy input, filter it and provide as clean and stable as possible DC power to the actual amplifier circuits. In very simple set-ups, it used to be not much more than a transformer, a bridge rectifier, some large smoothing capacitors and maybe some higher frequency and, possibly, some ferrite chokes to filter out high frequency signals. In the case of expensive HiFi kit, then I'd expect an extremely high level of filtering and regulating of the DC power such that nothing short of a catastrophic AC surge will disrupt that clean DC supply to the amplifier circuits. Certainly no power cable is going to change any of that.
This is not to say there aren't ways that the way AC is connected can't wreck audio. The most important is earthing/grounding arrangements. Grounding different pieces of interconnected audio equipment to different circuits can cause mains signals to be induced in the shielding and cause mains hum. Indeed, even connected to the same ground you might get that, and connecting shielding at just one and and using differential input/outputs on signal cables, especially at low levels, is highly desirable. Hence microphones, guitars and so on tend to be on XLR connectors.
But there is no way the actual power cable changes any of this.
I notice a trend in the replies. The guys who have actually tried braided power cords and done an A-B comparison ALL say they are worth it. The only guys who say they do not work are the guys who have never tried. How can they say it doesn't work if they never tried an A-B comparison? Too many keyboard warriors spouting uninformed opinions that are worthless. Theoretical opinions mean nothing. What you hear from the speakers means everything. There are many power cords for under $100 that offer an audible improvement in sound. Try them, they have 30 or 60 day return guarantees.
^^dingdingding^^ we have a winner!
The "snake oil" crowd (the cable deniers crowd) assert that it is the placebo effect; that people trick themselves into thinking that they hear a difference.
Cables do make a difference (both interconnects and power cables). But you will never get the naysayers to change their tune. You would have a better chance at getting them to change their religion or change their political party.
If you sat them down in front of a great stereo system, and had them swap the cables, they would probably be forced to admit that they really do hear the difference, and that it is not subtle (it is "in your face" better). But such demonstrations are not going to happen.
A lot of their denials are based on envy. They cannot afford a quality stereo, and so they knock what they cannot afford, so as to convince themselves that they are not missing out on what is supposedly no better than what they own.
They are even envious that they cannot participate in such a test (swapping stock cables for high-end cables on a $50,000 or $100,000+ stereo).
I cannot afford this stuff. But I know that it works. I do not deny reality.
Sure, I am a bit envious of others that own this stuff, the same as being envious of those that own Ferrari's. But I will never knock something simply because I cannot afford it.
Quality equipment, of any kind, will cost more. To those that can afford it, good for them.
@@NoEgg4u , i agree with everything you said and would like to add a second reason for the naysayers. i genuinely believe there are people who *CANNOT* hear the differences. and because _they_ cant hear it... obviously, it doesnt exist!
i can run faster than you. you can jump higher than me. your brother can lift more than either of us.
why is it such a leap to imagine one person can hear better than the next guy?
We can say that because our head is not full of garbage
@@Harald_Reindl and yet some how the purists fail to account for the 20 odd meters of cable that isn’t braided from the power outlet back to the main switch board. ??
Braid cable in the wall, braid cable in your house, braid cable in your street😂
Of course braided cables are better! --- for the profits of the companies that make them.
For what a stereo system sounds like, not so much.
I was told by several high end store salespersons to avoid braided interconnects in the 1980s and 1990s ( there were no such power cables then ). Why were they wrong?
Many high end audio salesmen lie. Many do it intentionally, many do it by giving incorrect answers due to their own incorrect opinions because they are uninformed or unaware.
There are probably 1000 to 1 that have heard the improvements offered by aftermarket power cords vs those that say they didn't hear any improvement.
Avoid unshielded braided interconnects because unshielded unbalanced interconnects have poor shielding in them. Unbalanced interconnect made with unshielded twisted pair is generally a bad idea because poor shielding, some braiding styles can perform slightly better than that, but are not still good compared to a properly shielded cable.
For balanced signals unshielded twisted pair is quite ok, but shielded is still better, and shielded star-quad even better. I would not bother with strange braided cable here, because not much potential to gain here and potential to loose a lot with non-ideally done braiding.
Why did they say to avoid them? Isn't it better to give things a try ? A High end Store will always have a try before you buy option - otherwise they are not High End.
@@adotopp1865 some unskilled and immoral sales people with cash problems will lie, but a person skilled enough to hold a good sales position has the tools to create both income and happy customers, while perhaps avoiding , at times, some unproductive details.
often salespeople will simply repeat what was told by the factory reps during product sales training, since they are the authorities , leaving salespeople knowing little beyond what they are told. the real good product information is what they are told by customers.
The Absolute Sound reviewed these and commented that, compared with other high priced power cables these are a “steal”. Oh, you betcha.
it's unfailingly amazing how so many audio products are priced below market, just amazing . It's as if all the other competitors are flop business people incapable of price competition and market knowledge.
Homedepot 1.5 a foot 12 Guage is all you need and it's prebraided 3 solid core too. Hard to maneuver but better than paying hundreds eh? . Tellurium copper connectors is abundant nowadays, follow IACS standards. Solid core is always better in audio.
Standard Mains cable will be fine and so will standard speaker wire. It is interesting to try mains cable as speaker wire though, it alters the sound.
wouldn't having higher inductance filter out noise at higher frequencies? wouldn't rolling off higher frequencies be a good thing? 50-60hz is pretty low
Inductance is an impediment to high current rise times.
That said, I'm not supporting Paul's claims here, ie., twisting in a line side cord resulting in any significance.
@Douglas Blake
As long as it didn't inhibit high amperage pulse like current delivery.
@Douglas Blake
Agreed
I'm simply speaking to the original inquiry about inductance, line side inductance... which would be an impediment to high current pulse like demands, ie., SMPS, and/or in pro audio; simultaneous kick drum and bass guitar transient, etc., whereas the duration exceeds cap reservoirs.
I think the level of cabling you need is relative to the quality of the audio equipment you need.
If you run a $500 system, you don't need $5k cables...
if you run a $50k system, you will probably want to go with those $5k cables.
I put a $150 power cable on my $200 amp. lol! overkill, sounds great tho
@@ChiefExecutiveOrbiter
Early 80's I had a $3k rig in my $300 Chevette...
You don't need 5k cables no matter what
If you live in a 300k house, you should wipe your buttocks with 10 dollar toilet paper. If you live in a 30 million dollar house, you should still wipe your buttocks with 10 dollar toilet paper. Don't buy 5000 dollar toilet paper just because your house costed more.
Cabling is at the bottom end of importance regarding hierarchy of spending.
1.a) Speakers
1.b) Room
2.) Amplification
...
...
Connections
Cabling
My take...
Granted, cabling isn't to be disregarded, just isn't as valuable of an platform for undue emphasis.
(edited for spelling)
Isn't Kimber braided cable?
This continuing trend of PS Audio paying lip service to their buddies Audioquest in order to get their cabling for cheap is becoming too much for me to bear. I'm out of here. What a whole lot of crap. There is no application where power cables are braided. None, other than audio snake oil.
Which cables in the walls?
sssst dont blow the fairytales!! :-P
Let me give you a hint. It's highly likely that there is 12/2 or 12/3 solid Romex from Home Depot. Have you ever seen the inside of your main or sub electrical panel and the proximity of cables and breakers to one another? What's next? Audiophile circuit breakers and running dedicated braided cable from the home to where the power is generated?
@@hockeyplayer28 Indeed... power cables are wasted money... And if someone can hear the difference I don't argue I wish him the best and felicitate the vendor and producer of he cable for making easy and lots of money...
@@hockeyplayer28 also consider the other end of the recording chain. Every recording studio in the world* uses just good quality regular studio standard wire in capturing the original sound. these places are not cheap to build or update, and boutique wire , if needed, would be just another justified expense among many.
* Barbara Streisand demanded a studio be rewired with about $230,000 worth of all silver wires and connectors. I haven't heard of it upsetting the recording industry or the audiophile vinyl community with results.
We twist pairs of data cables (in a LAN environment using UTP - Unshielded Twisted Pair) in an effort to reduce crosstalk - interference from one SIGNAL to the other on two adjacent wires in a cable. We care about that because there is INFORMATION being transmitted down those network cables that we don't want to get corrupted while in transmission. There is no information and no signal being transferred down an AC powerline. So, there is no "data" there to even be corrupted. So, having said that, why would you possibly care if your power cables were twisted at all if no data is there to even be put at risk of corruption? Answer: You wouldn't.
Love kimber kable!!
Paul, do you ship you ship your fine amplifiers with braided cords? If no, why not?
Steve Scudder, it's the cost. If they included very top-end cables the amplifiers would sell for to much, instead they include a good cable, then leave it buyers choice if they upgraded to better power cables afterwards.
That’s BS. They could spend an extra $10 to braid their own power cables. They know it makes no difference which is why they don’t ship the amps with them.
@@YuengsNwings true, if it mattered, they would be unique in the industry and dominate the market because of the clear performance advantage.
the brain will tend to deflect or deny challenges to cherished beliefs. just like a smoker will say smoking only hurts the other guy, a sucker who owns expensive wiring will say there is an audible difference. And the beauty of human hearing is that it will always immediately confirm a bias , which becomes reality in a brain process without the ability of self awareness.
I have yet to find a theater, venue, or concert stage have braided power cables. I wonder why the professionals responsible for bringing us live music, rarely if ever use these esoteric techniques? Highly respected Gene DellaSala from Audioholics has tested objectively, written and commented a lot on this subject and his conclusion is the same as mine. After you get to a base point of "good enough" quality, the extra juice simply is not worth the squeeze. If you don't agree with my humble trust in experts like Gene, just let me state for the record - "I like turtles!"
Paul surely you are running that amplifier off of your "Power Plant AC Re-generators" , now in that case the Dragon power cords from the AC Re-generators to the amplifier makes sense ,But using a Dragon cord from the wall outlet to the AC-Re-generators does not make any sense ,it only needs to be of a sufficient gauge wire. With that said all audio equipment works off of a DC power supply ,now if the supply is well regulated (many aren't) and filtered with enough reserve capacity to handle large transients or bass notes then what is coming in AC wise should not make a difference.
I cannot agree more. Can't help but thinking the old rule "garbage in garbage out" would apply to the power feeding the the AC regenerators, especially when it comes to passive components. This has bothered me for a long time. Seems to me that money could be spent other places.
I am running it from the wall to the regenerator and then another from the regenerator to the equipment. If the regenerator were perfect (it is not) and if the regenerator created no electrical radiated noise (it creates a lot of downstream noise) then you would be correct.
I don't know how it works but I have made of many different types of power cables and they do all sound different,eg big solid copper increase in base at the cost of hi frequency hundreds of thin wires improvement in high frequency and mid-range lack of bass I have no idea what's going on but that's what I've experienced.
Skin effect and lack of conductivity.
Thanks for this. It is the same result that I had, mains cable gives a heavy bass and a lumpy loud sound.
@Douglas Blake nothing to be gained no.
I'm open to clarification, but using braided power cable seems to conflict with the use of parallel power cables in the wall. Maybe braiding the power cable is most effective in proximity to the device?
it is most effective for the salesman΄s bank account.
Out of sight, out of mind I guess. No common sense?
Think of it like a water filter. Cleans up your water before it exits the spout. The better the filter, the cleaner the water.
@@LunarLightLtd1 amps run on DC...a good PSU is where it matters
@@boomertsfx1 i won't disagree that power supplies matter, but i have heard first hand the effect on better power cables. It's not placebo; it had an obvious and measurable difference. I don't have shitty gear either. It's not the best, but definitely not a slouch.
Dear Paul, l have a question. How audio cables impact on unwanted noise? Thank you in advance.
Ray Kimber arrived at a show once, with a power cable made from 8tc speaker cable! I can not remember how he grounded it, unless he ran a ground conductor down the center of the 8tc.
You just fueled an unhealthy obsession over power influencing sound. If the goal is clean sound, I can already see producers in the music industry laughing their asses off as they add compressed vinyl hiss and pops to tracks. Thing is, not all music is produced the same and those slight differences in frequency per song can drive an audiophile mad. “Well-designed gear doesn’t need a premium power cord priced over $100 because it has circuitry inside that can reject AC power noise.”
Please list the power cables that you used in your listening test, to conclude that power cables make no difference.
Please also list all of your stereo's "Well-designed gear" that you used in your listening test (speakers, amps, pre-amp, DAC, transport, phono-amp, tone-arm, cartridge, etc), and room treatments.
@Duranarts:
24 hours later: 2nd Request:
Please list the power cables that you used in your listening test, to conclude that power cables make no difference.
Please also list all of your stereo's "Well-designed gear" that you used in your listening test (speakers, amps, pre-amp, DAC, transport, phono-amp, tone-arm, cartridge, etc), and room treatments.
@@NoEgg4u Forget it. No one is ever going to submit to any tests because of a few reasons:
1) They don't have the money to buy the various products.
2) They are scared that after the costs and time, they'll be proven wrong
Besides, no test is ever going to be valid for a very simple reason. There is no established, agreed upon control. On top of that, even if there was an agreement on a control system, that system will operate differently in different environments.
So, until a super rich person decides to build a facility where audiophiles can come and make tests on a system and environment that is agreed upon 100% as a control, we will never put this debate to rest. :(
@@falcon048 Even if a rich person did so, some naysayers will still cry shenanigans. They will claim that some slight-of-hand is going on, etc.
There will never be, and should never be, an agreed upon control, because we all have different tastes (so it cannot ever really be agreed upon). But any truthful person will confirm that they hear the improvements that accompany better power cords, on all but crappy stereos.
And although this conversation will never end, we should never let the trolls make an inch of progress. Never back down to bullies. Never let the inmates run the asylum. Never let those, that never did a listening test, spew misinformation. If they cannot do a listening test, then they should not assert that they know what is what.
I never declare XYZ in a video about things I do not know. People that do that are inconsiderate and arrogant.
@@NoEgg4u I used to be skeptical of power cables until I was in the market to start acquiring them. I had the biggest and most dramatic gains in sound quality than I ever did upgrading interconnects and speaker wire.
As a result however, I no longer believe that "crappy" equipment is incapable of being affected by the quality of connections and power; especially power.
I was running a quirky system on my computer that all the "audiophiles" pissed at because I spent 10 times more on the back end than I did on the speaker system. The results were unbelievable. So much so that every one who listened to it was blown away...first by the incredible sound...and then the incredible price tag ;).
I had the Audioengine A2+ paired with their S8 sub. By itself it's a reasonable system. However...I was running Audioquest's NRG Edison socket, with PS Audio's Noise harvester. Then coming out of that through Shunyata Research's Reference Delta v2 XC and into Shunyata's Venom V16 power distributor. That's already $3200. But it powers everything. The speakers, the sub, the PC running the music, etc. Going into the A2+ was Kimber Kable's Summit Palladian. Yes, a $1400 power cable going into a tiny speaker that cost about $280. Then I loomed the whole thing in Synergistic Research's Foundation line.
No one would have ever thought to build a system like that. For $280, the A2+ was an engineering masterpiece. A small AB class amp that could push 22Khz to 65Hz. The sound quality was intense, clean, clear, musical, holographic.
I later upgraded to Audioengine's HD6 to get a more full and rich mid-range and mid-bass. With all that power back end, this speaker system is still thirsty and hasn't quite attained the the sound glory its teeny-tiny brother was capable of. :( I think I have to upgrade the main interconnect and the power cable; it's a future project to be sure. :)
What I like to know is what is the "hudge" difference, improvement using these cables compared to standard power cables? What happen to the sound? More transparent, clean? Does it alter frequency response?
I run a 10/3 AWG dedicated circuit for my system although I only use one leg for the digital end and the other for the analog end of my amplification. Nice to know the natural braiding of the 4 wires (including ground) have some other benefit! Am curious to know now if the metal armor on the wire is beneficial or not with regards to inductance or shielding.
stick this here because it keeps getting failed to post!
yes but you need an RF rejection filter on interconnect and speaker cables to reject 100,000kHz-1mhz getting onto the cable, this is quite simple a capacitor or 2 and resistor.
you can read about it on dnm designs. they sell little boards go into your interconnects rca plugs and your amplifier to speaker cable. this was common practice with valve amplifiers years ago and somehow got lost in solid state.
tell me you can see it..
nobody's reply so it looks like it's blocked?
It's been my experience that anomalies in power distribution are rarely, if ever, a result of something local. Like your home or apt. I do recommend one of the PS Audio Power Regen's. You share a common distribution transformer with your neighbor(s). They could be running an old old (3-ton) air conditioning unit with a failing motor. Old multi-unit buildings with common utilities can be horrible. I could go on and on. Think hard. How really old is the residence your living in. Built in the 1950's? A $3000. 3-meter modular power cord is not going to fix that.
@@wilcalint This is the actual circuit wire. So it's about 50'ish feet from my distribution panel
@@jctai100 Note that if you have a long run in a residence likely there are buried and/or hidden junction boxes. Sometimes several of them. And the wires in those boxes are wire nutted together. Sometimes many wires. Also look carefully for aluminum wiring. That was very common in housing construction in the 50's. Very dangerous and should be immediately replaced. A $3000 multibraided modular power cord won't fix that either.
@@wilcalint Ran the wire myself. I'm an electrician. It' separated
It seems like you would want to roll off the high frequencies as that's usually interference on an AC line due to harmonics and other interfering devices. Great explanation of the breeding though. I have seen XLR cables that are straight through I have also seen XLR cables with the two conductors twisted and I have even seen XLR cables with two twisted pairs. Thanks for at least acknowledging that there is some science to it and will come back to the snake water later LOL.
Paul’s not paying for these cables, right?
Paul, I'm a little surprised you didn't really answer the question regarding braiding and POWER CABLES, which is primarily the 60Hz hum and reducing EMI. You could have also mentioned the use of an isolating transformer, since we are on the subject of AC POWER.
I am sorry that didn't come across as I tried to point out how noise is lowered by the act of braiding. However I am not sure what you mean by lowering 60Hz hum. I do not believe that happens.
Hi thank you for the very interesting video as usual. Speaking of noise coming along the mains I wonder if a better design/execution of the power supplies inside the units (amp/preamp) like adding filters and so on can have a similar effect. I see for instance a lot of mains filter devices I do not know anything about their actual effect by the way Kind regards, gino
most filters now-a-days are there to prevent that device from putting noise back onto the mains, not so much for filtering the noise coming in. Of course they do, just not generally why they are there.
If the power cables used make a difference in the audio system's sound, where exactly is that coming from? Someone previously observed ( and I have seen this countless times) that the INTERNAL wiring in amplifiers, speakers, DACS, just about every piece of audio gear made are much smaller and simpler construction. Not to mention the many feet of unshielded Romex running through a house. Not sure a short length of floobydust wire will actually change anything except one's perception. And perception is everything, I guess. Shielding, and the appropriate low capacitance, Inductance and resistance in a cable pretty much describe the issue. The rest is just someone interested in $$$$.
It's not coming from the Floobydust cable It's what is not been taken away obviously . The Audiophile Cable is not additive process , It is a negative reduction philosophy. I have done many AB tests and came up with a negative result thereby proving the negative reduction being heard. I am no fool, and will only part with huge sums of money when I am unaware of it.
I am sure it will sound even better if he uses that red power outlet. ;)
I could be wrong but that outlet cover is probably orange and indicates a separate power outlet with its own independent ground.
Typically
Red; Emergency Power
Orange; Isolated Ground
Is your power supply braided within the walls then? Or from the local transformers to your property? Or from your your local transformers back to the power station. Its just a guess but I'm thinking that you have spent hundreds if not thousands on on just the last few feet in the run.
99.999999% of copper behind the walls aren't insulated or shielded. Braiding them would be a disaster.
@@falcon048 Are those braided wires in the video shielded? I was under the impression that they were each insulated but unshielded and connected to line, neutral, and ground. Obviously, the AC cables from the outlet to the service panel would have to be re-run with new wire, but I don't think braiding them would improve anything.
Are the wires in the wall going to panel box braided too?
No and that's why the focus on the last 50 cm of the chain is brainless
@@Harald_Reindl Does a water filter in the last few feet of your water supply affect the quality of water? Same principle applies. I know, it doesn't make sense, but I've built my own power cables, (cause I can't afford crazy priced cables) and they did change the sound. Dynamics improved and bass output was more powerful. I do agree, they aren't worth the price, that's why I built my own. Not even that hard to do.
Interesting stuff Paul but what about the cable in the wall behind the wall socket 🤔? Enjoy all your videos thanks.Tony UK
Have you ever seen one of those water filters used in many 3rd world countries? Water goes in the filter brown and comes out clear and ready to drink at the other end. The same idea here.
@@veteq101 but you can't filter that way - ideas without a functional brain are worthless
The power cable is the first section of cable, the twisted design is helping to filter EMI and inductance that came before. It's closeness is similar to those ferrite rings you see of DC power cables, they fit the ferrite ring very close to the actual device (plug end).
@@BoomerUKEngland lol - get hardware with proper power supplies
@@Harald_Reindl I have Seasonic Titanium PSU's, some of the best made, Kimber power cables still benefit the DAC's inside those computers.
I just don't understand why you need to care about the power cable when you have a good amplifier
Because expensive amplifiers seems to have shitty power supplies
Because an amplifier can only operate with what it is given. If you can filter noise from the socket to the amp, the amp won't have to waste performance trying to clean your signal.
@@falcon048 "the amp won't have to waste performance trying to clean your signal" is pure nonsense - the power supply is supposed to produce clean DC power no matter what
$5000 a meter -- ouch.
Someone please explain how power cables benefit from braiding. The AC gets rectified and smoothed - what get to power the amp should be pure DC. If cables degrade the signal, why don’t we use batteries?
They do not, neither do they need to be that heavy.
It is pure sales spiel.
@@montynorth3009 I am a physicist. If they give me the science behind it and it makes sense, I will accept it. Until then I am highly sceptical.
@@geocarey Graham Bell invented twisted cables so phone singles could be carried over USA that should be enough proof twisting cable reduces EMI and inductance.
@Douglas Blake Except with HDMI, twisting various cables as specific intervals allows for faster speeds of data transfer. So, twisting has a benefit beyond EMI.
@Douglas Blake Using twisted pairs with balanced signal source and destination can reduce a lot of the co-interference with adjacent twisted pairs, outside noise picked to the signal and signal radiated from the cable. Building the twisted pair with tight tolerances (wire copper thickness, insulation thickness, insulation material, consistent distance between wires all the time, consistent number of twists per meter) can produce a transmission path with constant impedance for the signals, which benefits the quality of transmission of fast and high frequency signals.
If you use twisted pair with unbalanced signal connections, many of those those wire twisting benefits are very greatly reduced.