Audio Media - September 2008 - (Page 64) POWER FACT & FICTION > I’ve heard far too many stories about fancy power cables to not explore this topic. Audiophile cabling has always been a heatedly debated topic – from speaker and line cables to, yes, IEC power cables. Since I am out to prove what is fact and what is fluff, it is my duty to put these cables to the test. Now I am not a scientist or a mathematician… I am an artist and audio engineer. There will be no bench tests, specs, and measurements – I want to hear the golden-eared professionals tell us what they hear, or don’t hear, in a different cable. If you take a look on the Internet for audiophile power cables, one name will surface more than any other – Analysis Plus. Analysis Plus is an innovator in audio cable design whose customers include major names in high-end audio and home theatre equipment. In addition to being electrical engineers these guys are also audiophiles – so the cables should be awesome right? I won’t go deep into engineer geekiness but several things including skin effect, current bunching, hollow oval cable solution, braided conductor advantage, characteristic impedance complexity, and frequency blurring are involved in the design of these cables (all of which are rather fascinating and available in the Analysis Plus White Paper ‘Report ’). The folks at Analysis Plus were nice enough to send us several different pairs of their Oval series IEC power cables for testing. As a side note, I must mention that these are by far the coolest looking cables I have ever seen. I now recall seeing these exact cables powering many of the high-end manufacturers’ studio monitors at winter NAMM in January. Now I think I know why. I sat down with San Diego’s own Jon Jenkins – sought after voice talent, recording artist, record producer, and audio post engineer. We brought a pair of the Power Oval IEC power cables with us for him to try out. When the topic of power cables came up Jon immediately mentioned Analysis Plus, and had a related story to tell: “Actually I just replaced my studio monitor’s speaker cables with the Analysis Plus Oval ’s and the difference was very noticeable. There was an increased depth of field and a tighter low end – more D – everything just became clearer – so I understand the difference that a cable can make.” After listening to a variety of different mixes and projects he was working on with the Analysis Plus power cables in use, I asked the big question: “So honestly… can you hear a difference?” “Yes – the same type of changes I heard with the speaker cables were happening here – just in a more subtle way. The three dimensional soundstage, the more defined low end – certain things just kind of came to life. The centre channel image and vocal presence was more defined. This kind of stuff can be really important for monitoring – trying to hear all of the details you can for quality critical audio. I’m on the mic every week recording and mixing promos, bumpers and spots for major sports and movie networks – having an accurate and good sounding system is very important. Also having good clean power for my tube mics and microphone pre-amps is a key part of getting a great sound – I have only been using the Furman stuff for a couple of years but I love it – it is a serious part of my set up.” Being an audiophile consultant and co-designer of high-end professional audio products, Howard Givens has been exposed to his fair share of this topic from both sides… and the sort of controversy surrounding it: “Cables do definitely sound different – there is no question about that. People in the HiFi world have certainly known this and people have even been discovering in Pro Audio that you can really hear those differences. With all of the factors that go into what makes a cable sound different it often comes down to the subjective aspects of your particular situation… essentially, do you like what this cable is doing in this application?” The O ther Side “With all of the factors that go into what makes a cable sound different it often comes down to the subjective aspects of your particular situation… essentially, do you like what this cable is doing in this application?” “We found that power cords tend to make the most amount of difference when related to high-current situations like amplifiers. So even though there is an amplifier built into the speaker it definitely has a different current demand. After replacing the standard IEC power cord that came stock with my ADAM monitors with the Analysis Plus Power Oval , it was really obvious that the sound improved – the clarity, we heard more definition in the lows, we could make out more details in the sound. When going back to > 64 AUDIO MEDIA SEPTEMBER 2008 http://www.sonic-distribution.com http://www.sonic-distribution.com
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