In the lathe chuck, suitably protected.
Hardly a mini lathe tho’
@Leadpin,.Hi 
.
Your question is almost impossible to answer,.it also depends on which powercable you have now,and on which you shall mount this new IEC-connector on.
I see you have Nap110 and 180,.we tested this powercable (see below) on a Nap110 and Bolt Down160 in April last year.
• Jorma Design Duality,.with Oyaide p/c 004. Oyaide’s second best contact.
It was a clear difference to the better in soundquality,.and PRaT compared to the original Naim-powercable
But this is a complete powercable,.you are only interested in testing a new IEC-connector,so this is not really relevant.
•But in general I can say,.buying an IEC-contact from a wellknown brand,and you get a contact of good quality.
But watch out for Fake-Products…!!!
I have shared a lot of information with the Swedish Furutech-distributor about Fake-products.
Even when they had pictures on contacts I sent,.they had hard to see if some contacts were genuine or fake.
Fake-products are often difficult to distinguish from genuine products.
It is often the underlying material that is of poorer quality.
And also processing,polishing etc is worse performed.
This is crucial for product performance,.and the ability to deliver a better musical-result.
And if you measure on these fake-contacts,.it is frighteningly bad measurement-results.
@Leadpin,…I amused myself with taking a picture of some IEC-contacts I have at home,.and which we have tested the last year.
It was a h-ll of a job 
.
If you click on the picture above,.you will see all twelve IEC-contacts.Three is missing in the picture…
Generally speaking,.all these IEC-connectors sound different on the same cable.
Sometimes the difference is very small,.sometimes very large.
It is also important that you mount these connectors with the correct torque (Nm value). Example:
If you pull the cable in the connector too tightly it makes it sound worse.
I’ll stop here,.but if there’s anything else you’re wondering about,just ask.
/Peder🙂
Interesting, thanks for the info. Currently i have the Tiffany electronics tpc50 cable. like this
I am considering the MS HD Power IEC connectors to replace the cheap plastic ones on my power cable
@Leadpin,…As you can see in the picture,.I have two different variants of MS HD Power IEC.
Strange,.on my phone I see only two IEC-contacts.
If I click on the picture you will see all twelve IEC-contacts.
Leadpin,.do you see two or all twelve IEC in the bottom picture.?
/Peder🙂
all 12 when you press the picture. 2 IEC when you don’t press the picture. For me im considering the copper MS HD POWER IEC connectors
1 Like
Although I do believe in using better quality speaker cables and interconnects, which absolutely does not mean the most expensive, I have always had trouble believing in high cost mains cables.
The thing is that speaker cables and interconnects are carrying the audio signal, so better quality cabling here makes sense.
But one area I have difficulty with is high cost USB cables. If someone is streaming over the internet from roon or spotify, the digital music data is travelling perhaps hundreds of metres over telephone wire, then when entering your house, it then travels over perhaps fifteen metres of the really thin bell wire. Yet we are suppose to think that all this doesn’t matter if the last two metres is high cost cable.
Like wise, a good quality mains lead is fine, but again, when it comes to spending hundreds of pounds on one this too is rather odd to me.
The power in your home travels many, many metres over standard solid core mains cable through your walls. This solid core domestic 15 amp cable is as cheap as chips, as are the sockets and fuse boxes that the wires terminate at. Yet we are supposed to believe that if we spend £500 on the last 1.5 metre stretch of mains supply, plug it into one of these standard domestic sockets connected to the cheap solid core ring main, that this will make all the difference.
Please forgive my scepticism.
7 Likes
@Leadpin Tiffany TPC50 is a very old cable… I’d just replace it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t heavily oxidized internally. It looks from your picture that its the black jacketed wire. I remember sell the Tiffany wire back in the early 90’s
Hi
If you view the power cable as a part of the orchestra playing the symphony for you then maybe the symphony begins from the 1st 1.5 meter is the mains cable ??
But yes…everything has a limit and the performance to cost ratio drops off for each asset / cable
The analogy I would use is this. Let’s say we need to travel a distance of one mile. We have a very clean vehicle and we want it to remain clean. Unfortunately the first 1700 yards are a muddy farm track/lane, but the last 60 yards are new clean tarmac.
How much use to the vehicle remaining clean is that last 60 yards? Will we be able to see a difference in how dirty it is when compared to the same vehicle travelling the full 1760 yards down a muddy lane, without the last bit being on clean tarmac?
1 Like
Luckily there’s a garage with a jet wash half way.
2 Likes
With an AC signal, the electrons only wiggle backwards and forwards, so the cabling outside your home is irrelevant. Obviously one gets a better quality of electron in premium cabling, which makes all the difference.
Less facetiously, whether one ‘believes’ in cabling of any sort or not is irrelevant. Try a few, if you hear a difference you’re prepared to pay for, pay up and enjoy it. If you don’t, return the cable and go back to whatever piece of electric string you were using before. Either way, avoid any internet arguments about cabling and don’t give a tu’penny stuff what anyone else thinks. Your money, your ears.
Mark
4 Likes
That’s right. It is all about how things sound to you the listener. It is also the law of diminishing returns.
I personally would not consider spending £500 on a power lead. I might pay £30/£40 if it was to make a difference, but not £500, because…
I recently watched a Steve Guttenberg video in which he was interviewing a friend of long standing, who was a very high end dealer in New York. They were highlighting the fact that the ‘cable’ side of the hifi world is a real cash cow as there is a ridiculous mark up/profit for the dealers and the makers also. They were saying that if a customer had negotiated a good discount on the hardware, that the dealer could easily make up the difference in the sale of the interconnects/cables.
They also made the point that the best cables/interconnects are very often not the most expensive. It’s about system synergy and that might mean that the best ‘fit’ for that system may be the more affordable option, whereas the costly stuff doesn’t sound right with that kit. In fact the dearer stuff can unbalance the sound and be counter prodcutive.
This is just cable after all. I recently was looking at a cable dealer’s online shop. They had a shop soiled 2.5m pair of very high end speaker cables at the knock down price of £2800. Now to me that is just theft. Really, £2800 for five metres of slightly used cable?
I remember in the 80’s when it was suddenly recommended to use the grey house wiring solid core 15 amp cable as speaker wire. It sounded at least as good as the 79 strand and 139 strand of the time, but at a much cheaper price. So why were we buying the 79/139 strand stuff?
Now, I still use some £18 per metre cable I bought 20 years ago [QED Silver Profile 4x4]. £18 pm then was quite expensive. Yes, it does sound better than some £5 pm cable I bought 2 years ago for a ‘try out’.
But I think that cable which is about £640pm [pre-shop soiled price] is just daylight robbery.
1 Like
Yea it is an old cable, for now I just use it. I’ll replace it when I upgrade the whole system.
Interesting thread Peder with your experiments… I was wondering myself how to replace the cable used to make your ac power Chord (Jorma Duality) because I couldn’t find it sold “naked” or without terminations on the net.
Can it be replaced by another power cable that you may have tested personally or with your friends? An alternative in the other way?
I keep thinking in my mind what you said about quality of the plugs…
I made one myself - a mains power cable for the SN2 - about 3.75 meters long.
Used a Lapp Classic CY 100 3 core 2.5 sq mm - bought locally from Lapp India
used a conventional 15 Amp Indian plug on one side - dont want to fiddle with this IMO
Other side used a simple Furutech F1-15(E) (Cu) - purchased from authorised Furutech dealer.
Made sure the L from the mains is correctly connected to the L in the SN2.
Am quite pleased with it.
I quite like Naim’s approach with their tight as possible (within the criteria of the standard of course) IEC connectors, although another way might be to loose two additional connections in ‘the chain’, and for the equipment manufacturer to connect the cable direct into the equipment, fixed as it were. Like everyone used to. You could also remove some connections by removing the plug at the wall end and connect equipment directly to fused outlets, don’t hear much about that practice either. But hey, that would diminish the specialist after market cable manufactures market, which irrespective of whether they improve the sound or not, are subject to ridiculous mark up. There are other ways of making a small difference to the power chain, which include the much discussed HiFi dedicated radial supply, but they don’t suit the marketing people who want to sell expensive after market cables.
How on earth does it manage that?
It’s not just about the tight grip of the jaws on the IEC pins, it’s also about the physical de-coupling, which is tricky, if not impossible to do with a captive cable.
It’s magic of course. Smoke and mirrors.
Whilst I know that speaker cables do sound different, I don’t think it can be justified to ask over £600 pm for speaker cable. This is just theft. Up to a reasonable price, yes, you are getting something better and maybe the £600 pm stuff is really, really good. But it isn’t worth the asking price. It’s just cable/wire.
And £500 for a mains lead really is robbery. It would need to be solid core gold for that kind of money.
I think if some people were told that a can of Heinz baked beans placed on the amp improved the sound they would be off to the supermarket and swear they could hear the improvement.
Hang on, what about the other 57 varieties. Some say that the best sound is with tomato soup. We could have discussions where there are the tomato soup advocates versus the oxtail soup believers. The Aldi soup buyers could join in and we could laugh at them for their cheapness and the Baxters owners could look down at everyone.
3 Likes
@vic575,…It’s not very Nice,.Wise or Sensible to ironize and mock something that you don’t have experience with.
If you do that,.you insult others here who have tested,evaluated and have experience in,.for example,mains-contacts and powercables.
• This is Furutech FI-E50,.they cost £522.
• This is Furutech FI-E50 NCF,.they cost £666.
In today’s currency-rate,.the difference in price between these Furutech-contacts is £145.
And the difference in soundquality is big between these two contacts,.this when they are mounted on the same powercable (as you see on the first picture).
But important:
It’s all about,.Musical Synergy.
So the contacts on the top image,.can against a particular product,create a larger Musical Whole,.than the more expensive contacts on the bottom image.
To know this,.and be able to advise on this,so you must have tested and evaluated this type of products.
And as usual in this industry,.so you pay for performance,although some products become ridiculously expensive.
But it would be nice to not have to read these ironic and sarcastic posts,.just because someone lack experience in a product-category.
/Peder🙂