Power Cables? What?

This is a tough one to explain and, for many, even tougher to accept. How does an upgraded power cable make your system sound better after the power has travelled through however many feet of Romex on its way to you? I struggled with it myself but the results are clear.

I first started to open up a little when someone suggested that I quit thinking about the power cable being the last few feet of the power feed and instead was the first. They believed that the gear itself radiates interference and the power cables act as antennas and feed it back into their own power supplies. OK, maybe. It was enough for me to be willing to try a bit and find that, in spite of my ability to fully explain it, there was an improvement to be had.

I’m a long time Audioquest dealer and strongly endorse the value of good signal cables in a system. However, I simply didn’t consider power cables to be their strength. They have recently hired one of the best minds in the field to completely redesign their power offerings, including the best power conditioners I’ve ever tried. The power cables are stunning. They are good to the point that it impacts my whole concept of system design.

Garth Powell, formerly chief designer at Fuhrman, has spent time trying to explain to me why they make such a difference. The bottom line is that, as regards both power conditioners and cables, the goal is to get as much of the noise as possible shunted to earth ground. I won’t get into the details (a conversation with Garth is intriguing but daunting) but the results are beyond what I would have thought possible. I never dreamed that the improvement could be so large and so fundamental to music as opposed to “tweaky” audiophile improvements. All are available for in home audition.