The people that complain about "audiophile" being snake oil can't hear the difference between different piano makers. There is a huge sound difference Steinway, Yamaha, Bosendorfer pianos that the skeptics don't hear in the same way they can't hear the differences in audio equipment. Everyone has different levels of sensitivity to sound, just like everyone's vision is different, some need glasses some are sensitive to bright light some have better night vision. I have very sensitive hearing and some think it's a good thing but finding audio equipment that sounds pleasing to me is difficult and usually expensive, this is not so good.

So is the AC feed throughout the building braided? Or does the last 3-4 feet of an expensive braid negate any issues with standard building regs wiring?

Congratulations on the new speakers they look fab..

Thank for this video. I am just wondering one thing if you could please elaborate on it as it does not add up at all for me. One can have braided cables for thousands of dollars, however in ones walls there are normal - mostly cheap - electrical parallel cables, which you could probably buy miles of for the price of the cable in this video. So from a bigger perspective, the power flows from the power station, trough the grid, to your house, then trough the walls of your house, to the power outlet, then finally to a super expensive turbo cable for let's say 2 meters. So how does it makes any difference, adding better cable at the very end of the electrons route? I understand that using worse power cable than in the walls, might have negative impact, but I don't understand how using better power cable than what one has in walls can improve anything. Please explain

Almost every power cord that you buy is twisted at least. If you take a cheap computer power cord and cut the end off you will see this. Same with s.o. cord, even some nm cable is built this way. Also, when your power reaches your equipment it is changed from AC to DC power. DC power has a completely different characteristic than AC. The transformer and capacitors do most of the filtering you need. I do think that keeping as much noise out of the system as possible is a good idea but to spend thousands of dollars on power cables is ridiculous

I still use a short run of Kimber PBJ cable from my preamp to amplifier. It is the best sounding reasonably priced cable I have ever heard and I have no reason to replace it.

Is it possible that I hear less bass in some songs after getting better power cables? My thinking is maybe I have better dynamics and therefore the levels are more accurate and at times that means it actually has less bass.

How do the wires in the wall sound? They are solid and not braided. Does the braiding at the last couple feet bring back all those lost sounds from the power going into the power supply to be converted to something else?

Do you braid the cable from the back of the wall outlet to the power station also ?......... Maybe it works from a regenerator to a component, but not from the wall outlet.

All my interconnects and speaker cables are braided and I agree with Paul that I think braiding makes a big difference to the sound.

How does Kimber's Summit Palladian power cable stack up to that Audioquest Dragon?

Question, if I m using a Power Plant and AC is regenerated to be perfect. Do I still need to use a high end AC cord to feed the PP and from the PP to the equipments?

Didn't use a silver spoon, BUT, I did drive myself to (near) madness about ten years ago braiding up a pair of Chris Venhaus CAT5 speaker cables. While it was a finger-numbing experience I was dumbfounded on the difference it made to my system. When compared to the mid-priced Monster Cable I had been using the difference was far more than night and day. In fact, "miraculous" might be closer to the truth. Since then I braid everything I get my DIY hands on.

Hi thank you for the very interesting video as usual. Speaking of noise coming along the mains I wonder if a better design/execution of the power supplies inside the units (amp/preamp) like adding filters and so on can have a similar effect. I see for instance a lot of mains filter devices I do not know anything about their actual effect by the way Kind regards, gino

By that logic wouldn't you already have inductance resistance in the electrical supply between the fuse box and the wall outlet ? This being the case a braided cable should have minimal effect since the issue has already been created in the wall. As long as you're not running super long cables. Maybe you should just hard wire the power amps directly to the fuse box through conduit.

Even before Kimber, AT&T was twisting pairs for 100 years.

If parallel wires act as inductors (BTW always thought they act as capacitors) and inductors filter out high frequencies, isn’t that a good thing? Ultimately you’d want a pure 50Hz signal.

I run a 10/3 AWG dedicated circuit for my system although I only use one leg for the digital end and the other for the analog end of my amplification. Nice to know the natural braiding of the 4 wires (including ground) have some other benefit! Am curious to know now if the metal armor on the wire is beneficial or not with regards to inductance or shielding.

Does braiding reduce RFI? And/or other mains contamination?

Dear Paul, l have a question. How audio cables impact on unwanted noise? Thank you in advance.

I understand that good shielding CAM make a huge difference compared to unshielded. But I dont understand those 5 cm thick cables. What for is it?

If parallel wire serves as an inducer and filters out higher frequencies, it seems one WOULD want this type of wire to eliminate more noise transmission.

I just use Mercury 79 strand speaker cables from amp to speakers. The best sounding cables I ever used coming from QED

Everything you do or buy will make a difference, that's physics for you. The question is though, will you hear it? But.......how good (and expensive) must your set be, how good of a recording and how good must your ears and room be? To i.e. hear a difference between the same cable being braided or not? Personally i never heard ANY difference from powercables on my 12.500 euro set. Speaker cables yes, interlinks yes, power cables nothing.

I got a feeling Paul mixed up Capacitance and Inductance in this one. Every wire will have an inductance, placing a signal/power and a return parallel to each other over a long run will lower the effective inductance, but increase the capacitance between those wires. This is the idea behind transmission lines. Braided cables would have more effective inductance, but significantly less effective capacitance. Like with all things electronics, comes down to impedance matching to get every last percent out of a system.

Dear guys...just for info, in general, given two conductors, if we decrease the distance between them we lower the inductance but increase capacitance (Mr. McGowan said the opposite...error). To lower capacitance we must increase distance. Braiding or twisting works if both wires have the same impedance respect to ground. In unbalanced single ended twisting does not reduce common mode noise. Our home electrical system also is not balanced usually, so the same apply. Also, the ultimate meters of power cable matter 'cause everything has a sonic signature, the same cheap electrical wiring in the wall. It's a question of materials and their sonic signature, not a question of capacitance, inductance. If You change the power electric cables in the wall for ones with better copper, lower gauge and high quality insulators, You will listen a strong difference. As always, the audio system must be balanced and the ears of the owner must be good.

How does a DIY ROMEX solid core power cable perform? I'm broke!

Paul, do you ship you ship your fine amplifiers with braided cords? If no, why not?

Look at the amount of caps in that thing!

Don't tell the audiophiles how the cables in the wall looks. If you power cables makes a difference your power filter sucks. I could see absurd high capacity caps in power supplies make a difference a cleaner more effortless sound with very stable power rail voltages.

1. When 2 wires run in parallel there should be capacitance between wires which might “bypass” high frequencies. The inductance is extremely low even in a coiled wire, I don’t think there is much impact of inductance. 2. Inductance should play good role in power cables - we need 50 Hz only on the power inlet, inductance can reduce high-frequency noise. That’s why we put ferrite rings on the cable and use inductors in the power sources of devices.

It seems like you would want to roll off the high frequencies as that's usually interference on an AC line due to harmonics and other interfering devices. Great explanation of the breeding though. I have seen XLR cables that are straight through I have also seen XLR cables with the two conductors twisted and I have even seen XLR cables with two twisted pairs. Thanks for at least acknowledging that there is some science to it and will come back to the snake water later LOL.

Ray Kimber arrived at a show once, with a power cable made from 8tc speaker cable! I can not remember how he grounded it, unless he ran a ground conductor down the center of the 8tc.

wouldn't having higher inductance filter out noise at higher frequencies? wouldn't rolling off higher frequencies be a good thing? 50-60hz is pretty low

Paul, I'm a little surprised you didn't really answer the question regarding braiding and POWER CABLES, which is primarily the 60Hz hum and reducing EMI. You could have also mentioned the use of an isolating transformer, since we are on the subject of AC POWER.

Pure silver cables are the way to go. Optimizes transparency and eliminates distortion to raise listening experience.

Well said. I was a disbeliever until I tried building my own power cables and heard the difference. Equally impactful as interconnects IME. I followed a recipe from VH Audio. I use 12 gauge semi solid conductors. The hot and neutral are a twisted pair with a fairly tight twist. The safety ground is wrapped around that pair in the opposite direction at one twist per foot. Then good copper based plugs. They work well reducing noise and bringing out bass slam. And yes, I have no explanation how this helps when there is 30 feet of 14gauge nomax running from the outlet to the breaker box. Makes no sense but it is easy to hear. I have had others come to my room with their amp same design as mine. After wondering why mine sounded so much better I said try my power cord on your amp. Bam. All of a sudden it woke up from it's slumber.

So im supposed to believe with all the 12 gauge wire running through the walls of my house from the main panel the last few feet from the wall to my amp is going to make and audible difference? Bologna !

Love kimber kable!!

Applying ferrite beat on power cable suppress line interference. That's better benefit for me.

You said it all when you said ‘stupid expensive’!

Which cables in the walls?

braiding cables has been known to work for ages... just look at every other old tube guitar amplifier from the 50s and 60s it reduced noise and hum back in the day just like they do today! They would not bother doing it otherwise.

An audio prof who systematically confuses inductance with capacitance doesn't add great validity to everything he says. For the note: separate conductors in parallel add capacitance to the cable, while coils from the same conductor and inductance.

I don't get how, the current in the powercables behind the wall outlet can have one set of qualities, and the current running in the cables infront of the outlet can have another set of qualities.. It is a noisy signal. How can it be changed simply by running this noisy signal through a different cable.. ?

What I like to know is what is the "hudge" difference, improvement using these cables compared to standard power cables? What happen to the sound? More transparent, clean? Does it alter frequency response?

Homedepot 1.5 a foot 12 Guage is all you need and it's prebraided 3 solid core too. Hard to maneuver but better than paying hundreds eh? . Tellurium copper connectors is abundant nowadays, follow IACS standards. Solid core is always better in audio.

What I believe to be true makes little to no difference in this world, but here it goes: folks like Paul McGowan and Danny Ritchie at GR Research say similar things about cables. They both have systems that are very carefully set up, in rooms that are treated. I followed Paul's speaker placement tips, and those of Ron at New Record Day, in order to get the most out of my system. Now I hear things I have never heard before, and my system compared to theirs is laughable. I can hear a difference between speaker cables now; I could not hear it as well before. It went from marginal to significant. I will add that I have compromised hearing on my right ear, and I can still hear it well enough. I'm not willing to write off anything, as I believe everything matters. Rather I'd like to keep an open mind until I'm put in a position where I can hear it for myself.

Why not rewire all your outlets feeding your hifi system with braided cable?

Braid cable in the wall, braid cable in your house, braid cable in your street😂

Electricity, doesn't it have a frequency of 60Hz? So inductance wouldn't matter because electricity is so far away from the highs getting rolled off anyway, right? What am I missing?

Paul’s not paying for these cables, right?

I was told by several high end store salespersons to avoid braided interconnects in the 1980s and 1990s ( there were no such power cables then ). Why were they wrong?

Isn't Kimber braided cable?

The Absolute Sound reviewed these and commented that, compared with other high priced power cables these are a “steal”. Oh, you betcha.

There's no audio signal in a power cord. The frequency is 50 or 60Hz. So how would braided affect that part of a system since it doesn't carry audio signals affected by inductance etc..?

$5000 a meter -- ouch.

I have yet to find a theater, venue, or concert stage have braided power cables. I wonder why the professionals responsible for bringing us live music, rarely if ever use these esoteric techniques? Highly respected Gene DellaSala from Audioholics has tested objectively, written and commented a lot on this subject and his conclusion is the same as mine. After you get to a base point of "good enough" quality, the extra juice simply is not worth the squeeze. If you don't agree with my humble trust in experts like Gene, just let me state for the record - "I like turtles!"

$4200 for the version that goes with source components, $5200 for the high current ones. The concept of braiding might be sound, but no way in hell that these are worth the money (and couldn’t be done for a whole lot less). The argument that the amount you spend on cabling should be a certain percentage of what your total system costs is flawed- there is a point where you have the best design and materials for a given purpose and that is not related in any way to the price of your components.

All this sounds good but. As we know as men age we lose our highs so... and what of those who have tinnitus! Built in highs! Ha! As you say 6 of one half dozen... All relative eh! It's funny most recording studios can't afford all this technology. I used to supply them. The wiring fopas wow.😖 It's a wonder how good the recordings come out! 😉

Interesting stuff Paul but what about the cable in the wall behind the wall socket 🤔? Enjoy all your videos thanks.Tony UK

If the power cables used make a difference in the audio system's sound, where exactly is that coming from? Someone previously observed ( and I have seen this countless times) that the INTERNAL wiring in amplifiers, speakers, DACS, just about every piece of audio gear made are much smaller and simpler construction. Not to mention the many feet of unshielded Romex running through a house. Not sure a short length of floobydust wire will actually change anything except one's perception. And perception is everything, I guess. Shielding, and the appropriate low capacitance, Inductance and resistance in a cable pretty much describe the issue. The rest is just someone interested in $$$$.

On the subject: braiding and twisting cables is only effective when connecting balanced circuits that can reject common-mode interference, for connecting other types of circuits its useless.

Is your power supply braided within the walls then? Or from the local transformers to your property? Or from your your local transformers back to the power station. Its just a guess but I'm thinking that you have spent hundreds if not thousands on on just the last few feet in the run.

Paul surely you are running that amplifier off of your "Power Plant AC Re-generators" , now in that case the Dragon power cords from the AC Re-generators to the amplifier makes sense ,But using a Dragon cord from the wall outlet to the AC-Re-generators does not make any sense ,it only needs to be of a sufficient gauge wire. With that said all audio equipment works off of a DC power supply ,now if the supply is well regulated (many aren't) and filtered with enough reserve capacity to handle large transients or bass notes then what is coming in AC wise should not make a difference.

I don't know how it works but I have made of many different types of power cables and they do all sound different,eg big solid copper increase in base at the cost of hi frequency hundreds of thin wires improvement in high frequency and mid-range lack of bass I have no idea what's going on but that's what I've experienced.

I own a number of the Russ Andrews braided Kimber power cables, they make quite an improvement to both amplifiers and sources. Anyone who says otherwise has almost certainly never tried them. The benefit of the woven design and why it’s utilized, is its ability to reject RFI already around us. This is because the weave doesn’t represent a known antenna pattern. Secondly, the crisscross nature of the live/neutral wires in a mains cable for example, has a natural cancellation process of high frequency signals already picked up on the mains supply.

2 years ago

best thing to do is to separate the single cables. run 2 single cables instead of a single twin cable.

So is the building wiring behind the wall also special braided cable? Or is it regular NMB / BX. Why does a few feet of special power cable at the end of what could be up to hundreds of feet of parallel building wire behind the walls to the distribution panel make a difference? It is a serious question.

No. The answer is no. Braided power cables provide absolutely no benefit in a system. Come on Paul - this isn't a faith-based pursuit, as an engineer you *know* better than this.

Let's give credit where credit is due. Ray Kimber did not build wire braiding machines, he bought them, probably used which is fine. Those devices have been around since before electricity to make steel cables like on the Brooklyn Bridge. The twisting of audio conductors goes back to the 1920s if not before. Look at the analog telephone system which was largely designed in the 1930s. Every circuit uses a twisted pair. Look at CAT5 cable, strip a USB cable. Yes twisting of wires certainly benefits high end audio. But it is not some great scientific breakthrough discovered by audiophile cable manufactures. it been around since the dawn of electronics. And XLR cables are most certainly made with braided wires, at least in the professional arena.

This one has lost me, sorry :( Braiding for multiple conductors is the equivalent of a twisted pair for twin conductors. The purpose is to reduce the 'loop area' between conductors, and help prevent ambient magnetic field noise coupling inductively into the signal path. Not sure how this would help for the last few feet of an AC mains supply path, which only needs to be a pure 50 Hz.

How long are the power cables in the wall and are there also braided?

Great videos Paul. I was wondering if you used a braided AC cable from your main electrical panel to your wall outlet even braided inside wall box to ensure this induction mitigation.

If I may there is no such a thing as cable sound unless the same cable is used in the all chain from the internal of the amplifier to the internal of the speakers especially not passing through binding posts. And pls don’t get me started on power cables..

It's called common mode rejection : )

It must have cost a true fortune to install the audioquest dragon wiring all the way from the distribution panel, behind the walls, and into the sockets. All we're seeing is a tiny fraction of the circuit. Right?

I would apply the known science of human hearing and electronics before spending money in ignorance. power cords do not deliver any audio information, despite what this guy says about high frequencies. it only delivers power to run the equipment's own internal power supply, which then processes the electricity to run the device. the entire idea that the wall electricity will somehow pass into the audio signal ignores that equipment is not powered directly by wall current, but by a dedicated internal power supply A guy that supposedly designs electronic equipment knows this. that he chooses to butcher his reputation with snake oil products is his business. I used to be very interested in this guys products, even subscribed to the newsletter. I now question his credibility and concern for the audio consumer.

that's a lot of condensers...

When there is one thing that I hate is when audiophiles talk about huge differences. If there is a huge differences then I guess you hear it right away and the difference if obvious like changing a pair of bad speakers to a pair of good speakers. And now you, Paul, tell us that with using PS audio amps and PS audio power generators those braided power cables make a huge difference? Really?

I'm open to clarification, but using braided power cable seems to conflict with the use of parallel power cables in the wall. Maybe braiding the power cable is most effective in proximity to the device?

Someone please explain how power cables benefit from braiding. The AC gets rectified and smoothed - what get to power the amp should be pure DC. If cables degrade the signal, why don’t we use batteries?

What about that tens of meters of parallel cable that are in the wall..... Why does that last 2-3 meters outsider the wallmake alll the difference? Would like to hear a proper explanation for that!

I am interested in this concept but can’t get past staring at the outlet on the wall…and what is behind it. After the power is generated at some far away power plant, transmitted to the local substation, through local lines to your street, through your panel and into wires behind your walls (all non-braided) and finally through a $2 receptacle, what difference can this last 3 feet really make? Not trying to be smart, just don’t understand the value of “stupidly expensive” cables at that point in the electricity supply chain.

You just fueled an unhealthy obsession over power influencing sound. If the goal is clean sound, I can already see producers in the music industry laughing their asses off as they add compressed vinyl hiss and pops to tracks. Thing is, not all music is produced the same and those slight differences in frequency per song can drive an audiophile mad. “Well-designed gear doesn’t need a premium power cord priced over $100 because it has circuitry inside that can reject AC power noise.”

Are the wires in the wall going to panel box braided too?

I guess all the pros running standard xlr and such to make the source material are wrong and somehow a power cable will make up for the thousands of feet of power wire before it gets in your house.

Yes , They create $ 200 more profit for the travelling show.

So are you worried that unbraided power cables would eliminate high frequencies from the power cables? And then you use transformers and lots of capacitors for remove those frequencies from the power input. Strange...

The hair doesn’t stand up on my neck when people start saying they firmly believe in snake oil. Slightly annoying perhaps but if anything I feel sorry for people who are so easily influenced by the power of suggestion. If I spent a fortune on a stupid power cable I’d want to believe it makes a difference too but fortunately I have enough electrical knowledge to know that it doesn’t. Therefore I would never be fooled into actually spending money on such nonsense. I’ll stick to system upgrades that actually do make a difference. Call me crazy 🤪

This makes no sense. Nobody is sending sound down a power cable. It's simply AC power. First I should state, you do not get inductance by running two cables in parallel. The inductance comes from the length of cable on a linear run. There are topologies where you can largely eliminate inductance, but they don't apply here and are not applicable to a power cable. Parallel cables are actually capacitively couple. Now if you do the calculations correctly, and you can hold parallel cables at a set distance, then they have something called a characteristic impedance. When they have a matching load impedance, then it acts similarly to a resistor which means that all frequencies are attenuated at much the same rate. This means that the waveform is more accurately preserved, especially over distances. I should add none of this matters at mains frequencies for providing AC power to audio equipment. At 50 or 60Hz the effects are far too small. Whilst such balanced feeder cables were once common for FM antenna attachment to tuners with a 300 Ω input resistance, there are more common arrangements, like co-axial and twisted pair cable. The former are used for very VHF and UHF TV and satellite reception with characteristic impedances of 50, 52, 75, or 93 Ω, depending on the type. Telephone cable use lightly twisted cable pairs to maintain audibility over several miles of cable, and has its own characteristic impedance of a few hundred ohms. Twisted pair data cables like Ethernet UTP have a much more tightly twisted cable and are better controlled for the range of frequencies used. There are other reasons to use twisted pair, primarily for common mode noise rejection (basically cancelling out interference on adjacent conductors). All of these are are called transmission lines, and all use the combination of the capacitance between two adjacent wires and the inductance of the wire. I recall deriving the equation in my university days. For low resistance lines it approximates the square root of the inductance divided by the capacitance over given length of cable. Characteristic impedance might play some role in audio signals, especially low level ones, but really over relatively long lengths. However, absolutely none of this has anything to do with power cables. That's for several reasons. The first is that they deliver AC power, not audio. They cannot distort any audio wave form. Secondly, there may be a few metres of ultra-expensive braided cable (or whatever you fancy) connecting the wall socket to the amplifier, but there will be dozens of metres of standard mains cable in the walls and floors of the property, not to mention all the connection to the local power supply, the nature of which will vary enormously in different locations. Third, and most important, what supplies the amplifier circuits is not the AC mains, but the DC output by the amplifier's power supply. It is the job of a good power supply to filter out all the noise that comes down the mains cable. Absolutely nobody will deny that the mains is anything but very noisy; there is a vast amount of electrical noise which comes with AC power from the huge number of devices in a modern environment superimposed over the nominally sine-wave shaped AC power. That noise will be faithfully transmitted by whatever cable you use to attach to the wall socket to the power supply. It is the job of the power supply to take that noisy input, filter it and provide as clean and stable as possible DC power to the actual amplifier circuits. In very simple set-ups, it used to be not much more than a transformer, a bridge rectifier, some large smoothing capacitors and maybe some higher frequency and, possibly, some ferrite chokes to filter out high frequency signals. In the case of expensive HiFi kit, then I'd expect an extremely high level of filtering and regulating of the DC power such that nothing short of a catastrophic AC surge will disrupt that clean DC supply to the amplifier circuits. Certainly no power cable is going to change any of that. This is not to say there aren't ways that the way AC is connected can't wreck audio. The most important is earthing/grounding arrangements. Grounding different pieces of interconnected audio equipment to different circuits can cause mains signals to be induced in the shielding and cause mains hum. Indeed, even connected to the same ground you might get that, and connecting shielding at just one and and using differential input/outputs on signal cables, especially at low levels, is highly desirable. Hence microphones, guitars and so on tend to be on XLR connectors. But there is no way the actual power cable changes any of this.

THAT IS SO NOT TRUE. Do you think the cables inside the wall are NOT running in parallel?!?!?!?!? So if you have dirty water and then you add clean water, the water does not get clean. It just does not matter what you do there on the last meter of the cable. Sometimes I think you can sell any crap and get some people to buy it. Maybe it is not wrong what you say, but it cannot have any impact on the aforementioned reasons.

...also, do you really want the BHK600, FR30's to rely on that?! Are you tuning, on THAT?! CMON!

quality power cables matter for smoothness!

Don’t we want to roll off the high frequency of a power cable? We just want pure 60 or 50Hz

why are you blocking my post

I think the level of cabling you need is relative to the quality of the audio equipment you need. If you run a $500 system, you don't need $5k cables... if you run a $50k system, you will probably want to go with those $5k cables.

Kool, typical install - 3-meters of $200 braided power cable, $5.30 Home Depot wall socket, 75ft of 14ga single strand romex,to $10.50 15A Home Depot circuit breaker. Makes a lot of sense.

What good does the 10 feet of cable braiding do when they run parallel from the transformer to your breaker box through the wall and to your outlet? I think I am losing respect for this channel.