I didn't say you can't say anything, just posting my opinion as a helpful comment, gees. Take a chill pill.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, I hope you can read my post and get something helpful out of it.
-C
Your welcome. I've been folling around making my own cords for a long long time. Which by chance Imet a wire manf. playing Golf. He mentioned they made wire for military and NASA applications. Cool right. He said they have this 10 GA. wire with Teflon dielectric used for the power wiring in the Space Shuttle control panel. So knowing nothing I thought wow how bad can it be. I bought 3 spools. Less than $400 for 750LF. The manf. got me in touch with a winder. He wound the wire according to the NASA spec. in various lengths.
Since I've tried applying ferrite beads, alum foil and braided shields, Active shields, no shields, floating shields and now carbon fiber. The carbon stuff is the most affective so far. Not cheap but worth the money IMO.
Even had my buddy who owns a machine shop to mill some solid copper blades for the plug and the same for the IEC [ O' Heil ]. Tried many generic plugs. Found one that uses the same dielectric as caps, replaced blades and actually sounded the best to me. I tried some Acrolink plugs and was pleased with the results. They make serious plugs, again not cheap but very affective. I settled on the generic custom plug as described. Covered the outside with copper foil [ plug and IEC, then Teflon shrink wrap ] and connected to shield [ floated at both ends ] which has a drain wire to ground. Then made one with ground attached to IEC end instead of floating. Actually hard to say which sounded better. It was close. Maybe the connected shield was a tad quieter. Either way was acceptable.
Being a novice I had no measuring devices, and not an Engineer all was evaluated by ear using my system. Subjective yes but that's all I could do. Over the years 20 in fact I have learned quite a few tricks from Larry Smith, Frank Lucia, Belden and Con Edison engineers and whomevers brain I could pick at the time. That was a long time ago. Today there are so many well made connectors available than ever before
Today there are many well engineered wire assemblies available to choose from. For the DIYer its a bit less complicated to come up with a very good powercord these days. I still fool around with it for my own use. Its fun and rewarding.
Some of the manufactured cords that have impressed me are Dreamstate, Omegra Mikro active and Virtual Reality. Insanely expensive for me but really good performance. They all sound different which still amazes me. That synergy thing again. Actually bought yes bought the Omega Mikro active to use as a reference. The Dreamstate suited my system but at $2800 the difference for me was not worth the money. But that's me.
If one can afford such cords great, would never tell someone not to buy because they are really good performers. Having been around cord manf. for a while and knowing the pricing of materials in bulk its hard for me to spend that money even though the cord may be better. Probably is.
So in the end for me, instead of spending my money on powercords, I spend it on better components and power supplies. Now we have better materials such as ERS, wire, connectors and shielding to choose from. In today's economy every little bit helps.
Now back to my pasta. HMMMM wonder if this ziti would calm some resonance. The Penne cord oh my! Brilliant !
Chillin,
charles
charles