In an early thread, I said that I didn’t hear much difference switching from a Pangea AC-14XL MkII power cord to an Audio Envy OE-Lite for my Marantz SACD 30n. However, I realized that I hadn’t done a careful A/B/A/B comparison. So, I went back to do this.
Now the results are clear to my ears: Audio Envy is the winner by a significant margin. It gave the music additional realism and transparency, more of a “you are there” (or “they are here”) sound. This was especially noticeable on hi res downloads of well-recorded albums.
I was so impressed that I ordered an Audio Envy Ocean Elite power cord for my Marantz Model 30 to replace the Pangea AC 9SE Mk II. After breaking in the former cord on a different piece of equipment and putting it in place, the Audio Envy once again sounded better than the Pangea.
That left one more power cord: the Pangea AC 9SE Mk II feeding my PowerPlant 3. I opted for the Audio Envy Mega, their thickest power cord. The jump in sound quality wasn’t quite as large this time, but it was noticeable. Perhaps the smaller jump is due to the PP3 properly doing its job of converting dirty power into clean power.
Given that Audio Envy power cords are actually slightly cheaper than Pangea’s for a similar length, Audio Envy obviously gets my recommendation as the better “reasonably priced” power cords.