POWER OF SOUND REFERENCE POWER UPGRADE
POWER OF SOUND REFERENCE POWER SERIES

The “Nublado” track from MA Recordings conveyed layers of depth and dimension that bordered on the holographic, providing plenty of elbow room for discrete image elements to breathe-like the snap and trailing resonances of the classical guitar, the buttery bandaleon, and fast percussion stabs from the other accompanists. Similarly backgrounds were church-mouse quiet, allowing rich, dense tonal color to emerge from dark velvet silences. Ricki Lee Jones’ vocal on this track had a slightly darker, richer sound consistent with these cords’ easy-going, open treble. It doesn’t take much to smudge the gently brushed snare and the sax and bass lines during “I’ll Be Seeing You,” but the DD cords mastered this challenge with ease. They captured textural information that grounds images to the stage with superior focus and without the disadvantage of added etch or brittleness. During The Wasps overture, they reproduced the brass section in all its airy intensity from the transient bite emanating from the mouthpiece of each trombone to the golden bloom shimmering outward from instrument’s bell. Lotus and Challenger tended to round off the more aggressive elements of string sound in some recordings. Without losing any speed or attack, solo piano seemed to relax a bit and bloom harmonically. The Lotus and Challenger combo exhibited an openness, a harmonic ease, and lack of tension that effectively permitted them to disappear from the soundspace as convincingly as the reference. Dynamic Design’s Challenger also includes a battery-powered shielding circuit to reduce coupling capacitance and isolate system noise from the system ground. The Challenger, for example, uses Multi Layer Insulation System (MLIS) and or Unitized Multi Layer Shielding (UMLS) to lower the noise floor, reduce cross talk, and increase dynamics. Dynamic Design uses a variety of proprietary shielding technologies to improve isolation from EMI/ RFI, and maximize conductivity.

POWER OF SOUND REFERENCE POWER SERIES

Commemorating its 15th Anniversary are the AE15 Lotus Analog power cord for analog components like amplifiers, and the Heritage Series AE15 Challenger Digital power cord for low-power or source components. The recordings I used ranged from pop titles like Holly Cole’s Temptation to Reference Recordings of the Rutter Requiem, Elgar’s Enigma Variations, and Vaughan-Williams’ The Wasps, MA Recordings’ Sera Una Noche, especially the track “Nublado,” and the vinyl ORG reissue of Ricki Lee Jones’ Pop Pop, particularly the cut “I’ll be Seeing You.”ĭynamic Design AV is a Chicago-based cable company that currently offers three levels of power-cord products, the entry-level Lotus series, mid-level Heritage series, and the flagship Nebula series. The three contenders share a fine resolution of dynamic gradients that adds liveliness to the presentation yet each accents music in unique and subtle ways, not as an EQ switch but by adding its own “body English” to the presentation, particularly in the area of low-level integrity and focus-the micro-aspects of music reproduction with an emphasis on dimensional space and depth information, such as the layering of string players in an orchestra for example. Each presented a solid step up in resolution over stock cords and in some areas were threats to my reference power cords, like the Synergistic Research Hologram A. Let me state at the outset that there wasn’t an ounce of dead weight among these entrants. Dynamic Design and Voodoo Cable provided products specified for high power and source applications, while Audience opted for identical power cords.

Audience, Voodoo Cable, and Dynamic Design each supplied a pair of power cords. Each in its own way suggests that when the AC flows freely and cleanly, and aggressive isolation technology is used to thwart EMI/RFI, the rest of the chain clearly benefits.

POWER OF SOUND REFERENCE POWER UPGRADE

All represent a serious upgrade over stock cords and a significant expenditure to boot. For this article I listened to mid/upper-priced power cords from three top players in the field.

Controversies aside, power cords are a necessity and, technically, the first piece of gear that the system sees. Whether power cords represent the most important component in a high-end system, or the least, or even qualify as a component at all is an argument for another day.

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