Let’s say you are using a rack and a power conditioning device (PCD), such as the AQ Niagara 3000 or 5000, or a Shunyata.
If you also have a rack–let’s say for the Rossini stack (D/C), or a 3 piece Vivaldi Stack (D/U/C)–then, IMHO, both a practical and a technical question present themselves with respect to power cables.
From a practical perspective, you literally need centimeters of power cable, even 0.5m is a lot, to connect the components to the AQN because they are right on top of it. You really don’t want to have 3m+ of power cables just for this run.
From a technical perspective, if the PCD is doing its job, I would think you could get away with very basic power cables in this application, because the runs are so short, and again, because the PCD should have already solved most power issues upstream.
For those using a PCD and a rack, how long are your cable runs?
And for all more generally, I welcome your thoughts on the technical aspect of the question
They need to be adequately long enough to; (a) keeping them away from all other signal carrying cables, including the Clock cables and the Ethernet cable, and (b) keeping the Power cords themselves as much apart as physically possible given the stacking.
As a result of the fact that my listening room has to do double duty as a living room my rack has to be as close to the wall behind it as possible. Given the number of components and the number of cables they require (power cables, interconnects, clock cables etc.) this means there is an awful lot of cabling crammed into a small space:
For this reason alone it is simply not feasible for me to have cables that are too long, especially power cables which tend to be thicker and often stiffer than other cables. So as an expediency I have had custom power cables made with three different lengths, 65cm, 90cm and 120cm for the three different levels of my rack (the power conditioner is on the floor underneath). In contrast to Anup, whose electronics are hidden away in a closet, and may have additional space behind, having shorter cables actually makes dressing them for maximum separation easier in my system.
The shorter cables may be too short for optimum performance (I have not tested this but there are credible reasons why that might be the case) but as I say, in my situation that is just a compromise I have to make.
Our hi fi is in a living space as well and no one like to look at cables. i’ve used shorter custom cables in the past to help with cable dressing. Right now I have a long console table for the hi fi and I’m able to run 1.5m cables behind from one end to the other where the power block lives.
My ‘theory’ is that keeping PC the same length helps minimize grounding issues. Does it really matter? Probably not. In my case at least I can achieve a noise free system even with stock cables as long as they are kept well away from signal cables.
Interesting thread which I will be watching closely.
As I conclude a massive 1 year system transformation - Naim 500 stack to DarTZeel pre + amp - I have just completed a speaker cable and interconnect change over (Siltech silver). I started tackling power cables and this week replaced a 20 year old Hubble outlet on my dedicated line with a Furutech Rhodium outlet. A custom length Furutech power cable with their totl Rhodium plug/iec on the ends is proving rather formidable. I now need to address shorter power cables for the Rossini APEX, clock, Linn Klimax Radikal PS (LP12) and DarTZeel charger for the preamp. Like Richard @keiserrg shorter cables would be invaluable as, like @struts001 and many others, I have my rack against the wall with little room for cable dressing.
My question concerns the power consumption of the Rossini APEX. The Furutech cable I used for the DarTZeel amplifier is 11AWG. My custom cable builder has said many drop down to a Furutech 14AWG wire for source components ie DAC’s etc.
The Rossini APEX has two toroid transformers inside. I am wondering whether it would be beneficial to remain with 11AWG or could I drop down to 14AWG - the obvious reason being flexibility and easier cable management.
The gauge of the wire in a power cable is primarily** relevant only for power consumption (and the consequential heat generation). 14 AWG copper is rated up to 20A, at 110V that gives a rated maximum of 2.2kW, whereas the peak power consumption of the Rossini is 28W. So even going down to 14 AWG gives you nearly two orders of magnitude of headroom.
** I don’t remember anyone claiming the gauge of the wire on a power cord has any impact on sound quality for anything other than power amps which can have substantial current draw. It does influence the inductance, but not significantly at mains frequencies. After doing a lot of reading on the subject (I wish I could find a couple of great articles that were particularly helpful) my conclusion is that the parameters that most affect power cable impact on SQ are more related to the geometry, the dielectric and the shielding than the gauge of the conductors. Having said that I am sure someone is going to disagree with me here!
Thank you @struts001 this is exactly what I was getting at. In fact, I would go so far as to say that AQ and Shunyata should recognize this fact explicitly and offer different cable lengths based on the likely position of components relative to their product in a stacked position.
This would be easy, and lucrative, for them to do…
It would of course create inventory problems for them and might be against their “religion”. However, especially in their higher priced ranges I think this would make a lot of sense to offer custom lengths as a core part of the offering.
Excellent!
I think I will drop down to Furutech 14AWG for my non amplifier components and shorten up the lengths as well.
Once power cables are completed the only remaining thing left to address is to remove the Naim Fraim rack and perhaps move towards a nice double width HRS EXR a’ la Chez Struts. I know your DarTZeel looks right at home on that silver beauty.
PS - Andrew - I have settled on the full DarTZeel monty of amp + pre. Testing told me I prefer things this way. Our stateside friend Greg (@magicbus) is also back to running his Vivaldi with his DarTZeel 8550 integrated - instead of his TIDAL amp (sans pre)
@glevethan I notice that the ‘Source’ cables from Audioquest, even the highly rated Dragon, are all 16 AWG (I didn’t know this) which is a 37% reduction in cross-sectional area compared to 14 AWG. So at least AQ seems to share my opinion that heavier gauge is unnecessary for optimum sound quality.
