Audiophile Cable TRUTHS: Power Cords

hey everybody welcome back to gr research we are again in the listening room and the reason we're in the listening room today is because it's nice and warm in here and it's freezing cold out in the shop right now it's early in the morning i haven't been out there yet to turn the heaters on there's about a foot of snow on the ground out there between here and there and i'm not looking forward to going out there i figured this would be a good time to shoot some video footage here in the morning before things get rolling too heavy around here so this episode would be episode 5 and we're going to be talking about power cables and power distribution and power conditioning and things like that and how that relates to everything if you've been watching some of the footage of the earlier episodes you'll understand or you should know by now i'm trying to get it through you guys heads that wire is not wire you know there is properties going on there and i'm breaking it down into the fundamentals hopefully you guys can understand it's either an antenna uh in one direction or it can be a filter in the other direction and that's what's really coming into play when we start to start talking about power cables and removing the noise from the line the first place you want to start with removing that noise is right from the wall socket and i know a lot of you guys out there have heard oh your electricity goes through miles and miles of cable until it gets to your house and you think that the last four feet of cable is going to change anything no that's the first four beta cable that your system sees it's the same as saying my water that comes to my house goes through miles and miles of pipe before it gets to my house do i think the last four feet of pipe under my sink is going to change the way the water tastes yeah the last four feet it goes through a paper filter and then a carbon filter some cases a reverse osmosis filter the last little leg of the of the trip there it goes to a filter that's exactly what's going on with the power that's going to your system the last thing or the first thing that it sees is going to be a filter ideally and if you guys are not there yet you're missing the boat you've been listening to those flat earth guys tell you that wires wire will make a difference and i'm telling you don't be fooled by that the difference will transform your system and i'll share with you the first time that i was really blown away with power cables it was back in 2002 i was hosting a little diy get together at a facility in wichita falls and a bunch of the guys had come over to gr research had a big facility there in wichita falls had a big anechoic chamber i had a nice listing system set up and a few of the guys were there listening to my listening system you know and dave ellage was there and dave listened for a while i said man that sounds pretty good your speakers are really nice you mind if i bring in some of my power cables sure dave bring in some of your power cables you know i'm i'm open to listening to the system with your power cables in it so he says this one is my 14 gauge cable and he dropped it in on the amplifier and i'll tell you now on the amplifier is where it makes the least amount of difference where you're going to get the most amount of difference is right on your front end gear your dac your transport or your streamer your preamp that's where this stuff is going to make the most difference the amplifier is usually further down the list as far as how much difference this stuff makes but he dropped it in on the amplifier and i had no idea what to expect had no expectations and just thought okay we'll give it a listen and i was astonished i couldn't believe it the bass response was tighter cleaner deeper the vocal region was good the sound stage tended to open up a little bit i thought you got to be kidding me how in the world can a power cable do all this and then dave says want to hear my 12 gauge cable and i thought okay so i'm thinking now there's an expectation i'm going to hear more of what i just heard like i'm going to hear more control on the bass more extension more of everything i just heard wasn't the case at all the vocal region got better the upper region even got better what the heck is going on here i could not believe this difference and it was it was not something you'd have to go back and forth to hear a bunch of times to try and decide if in fact you heard a difference the difference was right there it was clear as can be so that started the journey it's okay what's going on here and learning everything that's going on from the wall socket to the gear and how much all that rf noise and all that electromagnetic interference really affects what we hear it affects everything in the signal path and i was i was totally amazed and totally blown away so that was the beginning of a journey and today i'm here to tell you not only does that stuff make a difference there's a balancing act in there in the filtering you can easily go too far you can go overboard with it and ruin everything it can be you can collapse the soundstage make it dark suck the music and the life right out of it by over filtering it so there's no one size fits all i can't say this is the best power cable you know use this power cable it's there is no best power cable um every application is different there's a different amount of noise there's and each each type of electronics are different we're in a rural area out here here in texas there may be just a few neighbors sharing my transformer out there somewhere on a pole the cables are underground going probably six eight hundred feet underground to reach my house i don't have the noise levels that i would have if i were in the city i've got buddies in the dallas area and stuff that their noise levels were off the chart so what i need here for power conditioning or power cables isn't necessarily what's needed there and to further illustrate that point we would notice a huge difference when we go to the shows we would have a system set up and we'd have it set up here at my place and have it all dialed in and everything sounding exactly like we want it we're getting that huge sound stage and resolution levels based everything perfect get to the show set it up and now we're plugging everything into the power at a large hotel in the middle of a city and poi does it change the noise levels are off the chart there's tons of things plugged in to that hotel all over the place there's interference everywhere now the level of conditioning all of a sudden has to go way up it's oh that didn't even sound like it did when we were at home we've got to start all over try some different power cables power conditioning different things that we have to do that's what really drove me to creating a system that was almost completely off the grid the system behind me now as you guys may already know running on big agm batteries the the computer the hard drive the dac the preamp all that stuff off the grid and makes a huge difference because i know when we take this stuff to the show that battery is going to sound the same at the show as it did here it's always the same never changes the electricity completely changes everywhere and not only is electricity different everywhere but the gear that you use is different a lot of manufacturers dial in or create a lot of filtering within a piece of electronics and i'll give you an example i had a young guy came back in the end of the summer early fall i think and from canada brought some electronics here for me to demo and it was an all-in-one integrated amplifier with a dac and it worked through streaming music to it through roon i think and we took that unit and we put it in the exact same spot that my 300b tube amp was sitting that's a 300 b2 amp sitting right back there and just move that and set that there and just unplugged my amp and plugged the same power cable right into his big integrated amp and we began to listen and it wasn't there it was dark the sound stage was somewhat collapsed there was no real resolution it just it wasn't there it wasn't making it and i had to tell the guy look it sounds to me like it's over damped there's too much conditioning and i know he's boastful before about telling me how much conditioning that there was built into the unit and the power cables and things like that would have no effect on this piece of gear because it had so much rejection in there that it would clean it all up and everything would be great i said i think it's too much he said no i think you just it just didn't burned into good enough yet no i know what burn in sounds like this isn't it let's try something so i went out to the shop and got an 11 foot power cable fury tech ends vampire wire continuous cast copper counter rotated on a polyethylene tube with the ground wire through the center of it it was a nice cable there was filtering and everything going on by the geometry of the cable some noise canceling but it was a four wire braid so not as great as aggressive in the noise canceling as the cables that we had in it and the cables that we had we had on it was plugged into a balanced power supply it was then plugged into an uber bus that was unplugged into the wall and they had good cables all along so there was a lot of conditioning going on with the condition that he had in his integrated it was too much so when we plugged that thing straight into the wall the whole thing opened up the resolution was good the detail levels were good the imaging all that was was really good it completely transformed that system by what power cable or what power conditioning we had in line with it and that's very typical of a lot of digital or class d amplifiers and another guy that has a company that makes little bitty uh class d amplifiers they're named after a fruit or something and they were sent to me to audition and i noticed the same thing with those and that particular guy claims that the cables will make no difference with his gear because his gear is engineered so well you won't notice a difference all that conditioning and everything of the power has all taken place in its power supply that thing was super sensitive to power supplies and power condition cables anything you plugged into it made a complete difference and that's just typical of that type of gear and even though there's filtering and things going on inside that doesn't mean that that's controlling all of it and it could over filter a lot of it especially when you're using really good power cables or power conditioner in in line with it it can be too much and it's a it's a total balancing act one time um eric hyder came from db audio labs and he brought a stack of dax with and we were we're going to audition a bunch of different d a converters they had different output coupling caps and he had had a power cable that he felt like was the power cable i want to say has a 500 600 power cable and it was nicely built and it was nice and he said that that cable sounds the best with the stacks so okay so plugged it in to the balanced power supply which again had an uber bus in line with it it was really dark sounding it didn't did not sound good so plugged my cable from one of my amplifiers into it sounded fantastic it sounded really good but if we took the cable that he brought and plugged it straight into the wall without any conditioning that was by far the best sounding cable it's a matter of just the right amount of conditioning and not over conditioning something and the difference is the differences are astounding and if you know what to listen for you notice it immediately one more story we we went to rocky mountain audio fest in 2013 and we were setting up a system again eric was there from db audio labs we were using his dax for that room and there was a group of customers of mine that were there and a bunch of a bunch of guys that just wanted to hang out and wanted to see the whole system set up they want to watch the setup process which is pretty cool we set up all the room treatments and we've been in the room several times years and years before we know what to do to the room we know where to start with with the placement of diffusers and everything we get the room set up big 280 watt tube amps nice everything fire it all up and everybody's wooting and hollering yeah that's awesome oh wow unbelievable and eric and i just looked at each other like this that sounds awful it is so lifeless what what happened to this thing and eric looked at me and he said did it sound that way at your house that didn't sound that way at my house well obviously something's changed between there and here what's different power cables are different really well we popped right up and switched those power cables out to another set that i brought the whole thing opened up whole sound stage opened up clarity detail wow the people in the room were stunned one that we even noticed it and knew what it was and what to do because that's what we do we have an ear for that we've learned it we've we know exactly what it is and what's causing it and we knew exactly what to do again the power cables that we initially started with were a cable that introduced a lot of filtering there was a lot going on there in that cable and if you're not careful you can affect things down in the audible range you're affecting that sine wave you can make it too dark and too congested real easy if you're not careful with the power cables but you can also really open things up if you get all that noise off the line so it's a balancing act there's no one-size-fits-all and what i feel like i'm trying to do here with you guys is i'm not trying to make a bunch of money selling cables i'm already doing really well with kits and doing selling upgrades and stuff for you guys that's the stuff that i enjoy but i get questions constantly on well what do you recommend for interconnect what do you recommend for power cables what do you recommend for speed cables i get that all the time often i just don't really have a good answer for these guys or i don't have the answer they're looking for because the answer is usually a lot more expensive cable than what they're in the market for they're not interested in the sixteen hundred dollar repair interconnect that i might have in the system that for me is worth every penny because they're that good they're looking for a budget solution so what's drug me into offering some cables is trying to find that performance level that's way up here but at a price that's way down here and try to offer it to my customers so that they have a champagne level performance on that beer budget and so the way to do that with the speaker cables was simply just to offer those cables as kits and let them do the assembly work um my my customers are pretty good at putting kids together and they're in this as a hobby and enjoying building and making things putting ends on the cable not that big a deal so the speaker cable kits are doing phenomenal the feedback i'm getting overwhelming these guys are telling me i was sure there'd be a difference but i didn't know there'd be that much difference this is huge this is they're going crazy they're off the charts that's what i'm looking for i'm trying to get the rest of you guys kind of up the ladder a little bit i'm i'm up here and i'm trying to drag you along with me i'm trying to get you along for the ride and once i get you along for the ride and get your get you up the levels a little bit i know that will be appreciated a lot more than if i were simply trying to sell you something and it's the same way with the power cables we've reached a level here to where we've come up with something that's really good for not a lot of money and when i say for not a lot of money i mean competing against the six and eight thousand dollar cables out there with something that's a couple hundred bucks is a bargain and in fact i just had a customer a good friend of mine uh down south of me that i sent three of these things to then in his system he had an eight thousand dollar power cable and a bunch of two thousand dollar fury tech power cables swapped them all out for these and said wow it just opened the whole system up sound stage is is more open more detailed everything loved it wants more of them great that's what i'm looking for that's that's the companies that i'm competing against but at this price point way down here this cable there's there's a lot involved in making this cable there's a lot of man hours involved in the assembly process and i first thought well i'll do the same thing as the speaker cable and offer it as a kit and i know a lot of my customers whip these things together without a lot of problems they'll spend two or three hours on the assembly process and they've got a great cable but there's also that guy out there that's gonna wire this wrong and he's gonna short out his whole breaker box back there or catch his house on fire so we decided we'll spend the time and the money and do the assembly on these and make sure they're correct before they go out the door so there's a little more money's built in there's a little more cost built in than i'd like but it's still these are still dirt cheap compared to everything else out there that i'd love you guys to compare these two this starts at 259 dollars and it goes up depending on how long you want to make them and then we've got a newer model that is incorporates a lot more tweaks than this b16 cable this is a 16 brake cable the 24 braid has got quite a few other things done to it that make it a lot more time consuming to assemble and a lot more expensive and i'm still waiting on a bunch of parts to get here to be able to offer those fully assembled so we'll start production of those in a few weeks for right now this one's on the website maybe by the time this launches we may have some information up on the other one as well uh but yeah we're trying to offer bang for the buck i'm not trying to offer you some kind of snake hole and i know a lot of you guys out there with real budget systems you think man 200 and something dollars for a cable that seems like a lot for a cable when when you're at the budget levels and for a lot of you guys it may seem that way but if you try it and you listen to it and you feel like that it's worth it then it's worth it what i'm going to do with you guys is offer a money-back guarantee on these cables you can try them for 30 days hook them up to your system replace all of your power cables let these things burn in for a week or two yeah they have to burn in i know that's going to make the flat earth guys heads explode because they don't think cables burn in but this polyethylene dielectric material takes a while to form it's going to change a little bit over time trust me throw it in the system let it play for a week put a couple weeks on it if you can then really start listening listen and enjoy it and and grasp what's going on and then take them out and put your old stuff back in if this isn't worth the money send them back i'll give your money back you got nothing to lose this is no no games making it easy for you you can try it for free if you don't like it send it back no problem um i'm pretty confident that not too many of these are going to come back because it's that good it's that big a difference so for some of you guys on the fence keep that in mind it's a that's an easy solution again i want to drag you along i want to get you up this performance ladder a little bit and the way to do that is to try it and listen don't listen to the guys out there that are trying to tell you don't blind tests and measurements and this and we can't measure this they're not even measuring the right thing they're not even doing science because they're not spending the time to observe the effect it means they're not even they're not even listening to see if the result matches the theory you have to listen this is all about listening the whole hobby is about listening and enjoying listening to music so you gotta listen now uh next i may do one more video after this and do questions and answers and touch on a couple of other things that i may felt like i wanted to go back and touch on if you've got questions send me questions if you're just out there want to uh bash the whole idea if you know you're you're one of those guys that's holding to the belief system that cables don't matter uh just hold your breath you're not helping anybody you're not helping the industry you're just hurting the industry and you're keeping people at a level where their music enjoyment is not going to go up and my goal is to bring you up so um that's it for this episode please hit the subscribe button if you haven't and let's get those subscribers up i love it that you guys join in every week and that's it for this episode hang in there more to come

Channel: GR-Research

Views: 132,028

Keywords: Tuesday Tech Talk, audiophile, hifi, loudspeaker, fullrange driver, comb filtering, GR-Research, Danny Richie, crossover design, measurements, best loudspeakers, tube amplifier, preamplifier, diy speakers, audiophile speakers, audiophile music, amplifier, best voice, audiophiles, high end, baffle step loss, open baffle, fast bass, subwoofers, line source, drivers, high power handling, low distortion, the room, speaker upgrade, audiophile loudspeakers, crossovers, DIY Audio, soundstage

Id: FNKRWvbIwUw

Length: 22min 54sec (1374 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 02 2021