You had something better to do with that $4K? For years I’d joke about my older brother who thinks nothing of dropping that kind of money on cables, that he would tell me he bought these speaker cables where the gold was mined in Peru in July of 1982. “I listened to the ones with the Peruvian gold from October of '82,” he said, “and they sound like crap.” It’s not a totally true story, but not too far off.
The truth is I could not sell the $6k cord, so I kept it for the switch. Of course I have something better to do with $4k, I will spend it easily on a few things I can think of. Maybe a series of golf lessons, but that will be even a worse way to waste money. A few great cases of wine make more sense.
You speak the truth; I couldn’t agree more.
— Chris
You went further than I did. I installed a commercial-grade Leviton 20-amp duplex receptacle, 12 AWG Romex, and Square D QO breaker. No silver paste. The run from my breaker box is pretty close to 20’, but it’s a straight shot, luckily. Each of the two outlets in the duplex receptacle feeds a PS Audio PerfectWave Power Plant 10, into each of which is plugged the subwoofer from one of my speakers, one of my monoblock amplifiers, and one or two low-current pieces of audio gear, of which I only ever have one with power applied—my PMG 512 DAC. My system is modest in its complement of audio equipment, admittedly, but I have a bunch or replaced gear in the attic and in my basement. My wife would dearly love me to unload it all, but it doesn’t seem worth the effort even though the value depreciates daily.
— Chris
When I did research for my AC power setup, the theory I bought into - partly because I couldn’t afford a PowerPlant bigger than a 3 - was to plug my amp and pre-amp (Convergent Audio Reference tube) directly into the wall fed by the 20 amp breakers. I spoke to Ken Stevens of CAT at the AXOPONA show and he said to not plug the Reference into a regenerator and what I read about amps said the same thing. To me it makes sense to give every bit of power replenish at that end of the chain. Even bypassing the regen stage and just filtering worries me about adding impedance. Did I compare listening with and without for all this? Of course not - that would be way too smart.