Just adopted a set of Vandersteen 5A speakers, much to my delight. As many of you know, these each have a built-in 400W amplifier for subwoofer juice. I’m also running a McIntosh MC352 stereo amp, plugged into the P10, following orders from present company.
Q: the honorable Richard Vandersteen writes (paraphrasing slightly) “plug the Vandy 5A’s straight into the wall and don’t use power conditioners with them. Also, don’t use aftermarket AC cables.”
What sayeth ye PS Audio disciples? AC cable-wise and P10-wise for these fine speakers, that is. So far, I’m following RV orders and am plugging them into the wall (dedicated 20 amp lines) and using the stock AC cables.
Vandersteen Quattro, 5, 5A, and 7 experience (powered speaker users) especially welcome on this query.
I’d say Richard is thinking of standard power conditioners and not Power Regenerators like the P10. Also, it’s an old stance and one that can easily be shown to be inaccurate - I’d bet money he’s wrong.
Hi Paul – Thanks so much for the real time reply. I will of course give your recommendation a try. To clarify your opinion a bit: Two Vandersteen 5A 400W amps + 1 McIntosh MC352 going to be OK into my single P10? Naturally, I can anticipate one might prefer 2 X P10, but is one P10 a solid solution in this case?
Goheelz, I have the original Model 5’s and am very happy with them. May someday move up to the 5A or even the Carbon, but only if I get a good deal on a local pair. Anyway, I haven’t experimented a lot with powering the subwoofers, but I did try one of the cheaper PS Audio cords, Prelude maybe?, and I didn’t notice any difference. I know this has come up on Audiogon in the past and I don’t recall anyone say it made a significant difference, if any at all. I’ve also hooked them up to my P500 regenerator recently when I rearranged my system and didn’t really notice much a difference there either. To me the bass is not as revealing of power changes as the mids and highs, and even those I have to listen close to hear a difference, so take my experience for what it’s worth. I will say I tend to trust Richard’s opinion on his products to the same extent I trust Paul on his, and mean that as a compliment!