[kevinc]

Originally posted by bluelang
Disclaimer: I am a deaf rocker.

Man, that's a lot of pages to read. That Steve guy probably had it right 10 pages or so ago - power supplies suck. Transistor output is constantly variable, right? So if the signal in varies, the signal out varies. Most DAC-sized gear isn't going to have the room for a real power supply, because real power supplies are huge. I'd be interested to see what the acceptable tolerance for internal voltage drift is for your average DAC. I'm sure that most of this stuff doesn't get tested on browned power mains at the manufacturer. In fact, I'd bet that most people who manufacture DAC circuitry don't build their own DC supplies - they buy em in bulk from China.

So you kids spending $$$ on AC cables would be much better served by cutting the AC cables off of everything, buying a seriously hardcore DC power supply located in a different room, and converting everything that doesn't make direct use of AC to use your DC line. With a mere $10,000 investment, you could eliminate huge amounts of inaudible and unreproducable artifacting.

Or replace the DC power supples on your critical gear with ones that produce solid output with a high input tolerance - which is hard to do without batteries or giant capacitors. And by hard, I mean "not possible."

The only time a new AC cable is going to make a difference is when the old one is unshielded and/or browning out. Converting your studio to 20amp mains is possibly not a bad idea, altho I'm not sure how much extra noise that'd produce. It is fairly cheap, tho. Maybe $1200 or so.

Good first post Man.

I welcome your logic. Keep it up.