Mike it is my opinion that the connectors are the most important part of any cable.
I am a little hesitant to say " any old power cable. " RFI is a concern for me. I would hazard to guess you are not using amy old cable. That said many companies offer the option of user termination.
How do you define "best"?
- For minimal voltage drop, at what current (power) level?
- Need for EMI/RFI shielding?
- What about safety ground or isolation?
- Desirable mechanical attributes like cable size and flexibility, connector size?
Etc. I am not a proponent of expensive cables, but do feel some metrics should be in play when choosing a power cord. Especially if you're going to spend $1k. I wonder if all components are up to the stress of a massive cable hanging on the power connector?
the plugs are pretty much doing most of the work anyway.
While I prefer a good connector, this isn't entirely true. Consider that the average cable has zero cross sectional areas. They aren't twisted, they simply spiral. That means they offer no real attenuation of noise. On top of that there is no shield on any typical cord. I would not prefer an unshielded non-twisted cable. Either shielded and non-twisted or twisted.
A cable with a lot of twists/cross-sectional-area will greatly reduce the noise from the power cord.
As far as connectors anything that is phosphorous bronze or better will do wonderful, with the big bad boy Furutech's being the best.
Also I don't like using under 12ga. Smaller never sounds right.
*You can't buy a pre-made cable with the Furutech FI-50 NFC on it because the connectors alone are $680. Your only option is DIY. Otherwise Dave's cables are awesome. Under that there's a host of whatever you can get your hands on without bad connectors, like Pangea etc.
Doesn't adding a shield to an AC power cord add considerable capacitance? Kinda goes in complete contrast to the Romex running to the outlets.
It's not carrying signal so capacitance doesn't play as big of a factor. Shielded also works best when connected at one end.
Twisted > shielded . That's my personal experience. But no twists and no shield isn't winning much of anything.
Having twisted power cables reduces noise that the romex can collect. But it also helps a lot since the stereo itself generates plenty of noise and tries to share it. The horde of cables on back of a stereo pollute, and the better all of your cables can reject/attenuate it the better. There isn't a mess next to all of the romex. You might as well think of a well designed power cords like miniature power conditioners. They don't do a lot, but they do something.
It would be very fun to try twisting two Romex runs. The results might be very rewarding. It would also be pretty hard to do!
Folsom great reply, thank you sir. So the preference would be if you use shielding is only tie to ground at the outlet not the component? Thanks again.
I moved to all Waveform Fidelity HE series last year. I auditioned a couple and felt they provided a punch and warmth that I did not receive from the others I auditioned (including Audience Au24 SE). I've been extremely pleased, and the care Paul Kaplan took in building them was impressive.
The best power cable that I've ever heard is the MIT Oracle ZIII. You can get it on Audiogon from Joe for around $700 new. Just for reference, I've listened to every single cable in the Shunyata and Transparent lines and a good amount of cables from Synergistic.
The bass is so prominent and at the same time effortless on the MIT, that it has to be heard to be believed.
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