A few thoughts and experiences on mains leads. When I started out on the hi-fi road in the 80s most stuff came hard wired so changing a lead was rarely an option. I read a few times about mains filters and gold plated plugs but was never inclined to try and to be honest whilst not an "objectivist" swapping leads around had never really struck me as something to be bothered with. I heard a few demos of different speaker cable enough to convince me that there was probably some benefit in changing a few things but being pretty much at the budget end I stuck with QED 79. However, when we moved to this house I started to upgrade and noticed one day that the mains lead Arcam provided with their amp and CDP was heavier than that provided with their tuner so curiosity said do a swap the result being that I thought there was a slight narrowing of the sound when the Tuner lead was used on the Amp. OK - nothing to get excited about so so be it. But curiosity was gathering so I borrowed from the good chaps in Audio-T Oxford a Black Rhodium Power Bar and a couple of whatever leads and yes there was clearly although not massively a smoothing of the sound with more detail but not enough to justify the outlay - I judged. Then (after a lot of evaluation) I migrated to Naim and an e-mail exchange with the Great White Fluffy Bear of this Parish ended with me inheriting a Grahams Hydra 6 way junction lead designed specifically for Naim equipment. Oh yes - very much cleaner, more resolution and musical - to coin a phrase. Then Naim announced that as part of their on-going 500 series project the launch of their own Powerline to be provided as standard with their CDP555/NAC552/NAP500. Apparently the decoupling at each end reduces mechanical noise at each end and the wire itself is copper shielded etc etc I presume. To cut to the chase I then went and won one of these beasts at a Naim Summer Roadshow. Still in the slightly less than convinced camp I took it home placed it on the CDP and wow this was like a component upgrade - bigger soundstage and more detail very consdiderable improvement all round. Equally trying it on the various other bits of the system had equal effect and I lie not it really has an impact on a £150 Arcam tuner! Curiously though whilst having an impact on the Roksan TT I've never been certain that it's entirely beneficial - the bass gets flabby. But on Naim equipment this wire in my opinion etc is really worth having such that I've now through the 2nd hand market procured them for all my Naim components. But the story doesn't end there. Despite the positive impact said leads have I was getting bumps and pops on my system whenever the freezer kicked in, the boiler fired up, toaster exploded so called up the local sparky and we agreed a dedicated radial spur for the hi-fi with a dedicated (unswitched) socket for each box. Instant success not a pop since and again a further clean up in the sound. One final thought on the TT. In conversation with Peter Swain at Cymbiosis we started to discuss the ultra expensdive Chord Sarum Aray wires and he kindly lent me the Powerlead to try. When this thing was in place I actually started to think that perhaps all this was in my imagination because I was at a loss to describe let alone explain just how drastic the transformation was such that I removed it put the standard Roksan wire back on invited Frau Strat in and she confirmed what I thought - yes this wire is very special. In a nutshell there was a texture, transparency and reality to Jennifer Warnes Famous Blue Raincoat like I have never experienced. Have I purchased? No - there a lots of things to do with £1,000!!!!!!!!!
