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Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys.

Think AC

Those that say that a power cord is at the end of several miles of utility wiring are thinking in terms of DC.
Electricity does not flow OUT of the AC outlet INTO the component.
It is Alternating Current, therefore electricity flows IN AND OUT at a rate of 60 cycles per second (600 Hz).
Think of your neighborhood transformer and your system sending a 120V sinewave back-and-forth to each other 60 times per second, like a lively "conversation".

This leads us to some weird conclusions:
Dirty AC from the wall can pollute the component's stereo power supplies, however, those power supplies have diodes and regulators that send back more noise through a little known phenomenon (transformer primary-to-secondary capacitance/leakage).

The noisy/dirty AC sinewave gets to the other components in the system, which add their own noise (specially digital components) and send it back do the AC (out)let.

Repeat ad infinitum and you will realize that properly designed power cords help immensely to clean AC hash and noise (since it is AC, it does not matter where the noise comes from, it must be filtered).

Please no more posts about "the last meter can not make a difference".
It is NOT the last meter. It is, alternatively, the FIRST and LAST connection in your system.

We can model a simplified stereo system as a bunch of DC power supplies modulated by a cartridge or a CD laser. The power amp's DC power supply is what moves the speakers.
If any DC power supply throughout the chain is polluted, the signal at the speaker terminals will sound gritty, harsh or distorted, simple as that.

I hope this helps understand why power cords and proper AC wiring are extremely important for good sound quality.
Carlos




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  • Think AC - Carlos 02/4/0408:13:52 02/4/04 (0)


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