Power cords and components

[ylee]

With two Wireworld Platinum Electra 7 power cords in hand thanks to Ivan who sold them to me a couple weeks ago, I decided to reorganize the power cord configuration in my system and reduce the number of components in order to improve the average quality of power cords being used.

Because my Ayre QB-9 and Classe CP-800 MkII built-in DAC sound very similar (although overall I'd rate the Ayre unit slightly better), I decided to take the QB-9 out of circulation. I thus put one of the Platinum cords on the Classe preamp/DAC (which covers both source and preamp) and the other Platinum on my Benchmark amp. My goal here was to put very high end cords on the source/preamp/amp trio.

I happen to use a couple Audioquest Jitterbugs on my music server and an Uptone Regen bit regenerator to spruce up the quality of bits being fed into my DAC. The Uptone piece:

USB REGEN

requires power, so I applied my AQ NRG-10 cord to the Uptone Regen (a $600 cord applied to a $175 component) and Transparent Premium cord to my music server ($600 cord applied to a $1000 computer which contains an upgraded Corsair power supply). My Vandersteen bass amps are fed by AQ NRG-4 cords, which I'll upgrade later. I thus culled the number of components I use so I can thus apply my best power cords on the remainder, I'm hearing some distinct improvements in soundstaging and transparency.

Make no mistake about it. Power cords matter a whole lot. Even my wife agrees the musicality of my system has been improved as a result of the changes. Deep bass notes are more discernable as notes as opposed to sound. Hard edges have been polished. Timbre is more palpable. I would have left my previous configuration alone, but buying a couple more Platinum Electras after having spent a lot of money this year already would have presented domestic challenges. My plan is to acquire more next year and add back the QB-9 as well as my Marantz SA8001 SACD player.