Power first not source!!
Posted by: Claus-Thoegersen on 18 August 2018
My latest unwanted upgrades has been all about power, and I am more and more leaning to a view of that source first is dead unless the source is the first powwer cable and your mains block. After a demo at Ansuz acoustics over a year ago, I changed mains block from Isotek to Mainz8D from Ansuz, and that was an improvement. Last year my dealer had a Ansuz Mainz Ceramic power cable, at a very good price. So the powerline used from the wall socket was changed with the Ceramic cable, proving that the first power cable is the most important one. 2 months back I was at Ansuz again with a group of my Friends, all of them have Naim gear and Audiovector speakers. At that time I heard the new Mainz models, and decided I would try a home demo of the mainz8 c2, even though the idea of spending so much on a power block is hard to justify rationally. When we changed the mainz8 to the c2 model, something strange happened. We had to turn down the volume to listen to the music at the same volume as before. How a passive block can make your system play louder at the same volume setting is really strange. Of course it was not only louder also better, like a box upgrade, and one of the serious upgrades.
Well this should be it I thought, but a few of mhy friends that was at the Ansuz demo, also wanted to see what Darkz could do under speakers and racks, and play around with power cables.
My dealer is sometimes able to get a good deal on the Ansuz products but it is still really expensive! Well I had the power cables I needed so no financial problems with a demo, where you spend other people's money, d listen to music and drink beer. That was until my dealer started to change the standard power cables from the Mainz block to the supercap for the 282 in the system, and afterwards also the Hicap used for the Snaxo used with Audiovector sr6. It was clear that this also was a huge improvement.
Ok so I suddenly needed 2 new power cables for my 2 supercaps since the powerlines now surely sounded terribly broken! Unfortunately it did not stop there! My dealer suggested we should try a Mainz d2 cable from the wall instead of the c2 modelled that was used. Everybody agreed that we could try this but nobody would ever even think about buying this cable, not even at a good price. 30 minutes later my friend decided that it would be impossible to remove the cable and go back to the old c2 instead.
All of us at this demo yesterday agree that had somebody suggested that we would spend more money on power cables and mains blocks than on our pre and source, we would have dismissed it as madness.
The only problem is that all 3 of us are going to do that anyway if we can find the money for it.
I was able to get another c2 cable yesterday, so this afternoonI spend time playing music and then changing the powerline on my 252 with the c2 cable. The improvement was bigger than on my friends 282, I would say much bigger. This is probably because of the Mainz8 c2, compared to one of the smaller Mainz models my friend is using, or it could be because the supercap just makes the 252 even better than the 282?
If you look at the Danish ansuz prices, a c2 power cable and the c2 Mainz8 block cost close to what the nd555 cost, without power supplies!!! However everybody with bigger systems really should try to demo these Ansuz products! it may very well change your upgrade path plans!
Claus
alanbass1 posted:Dave J posted:But Alan, you’ve already spent tons on SL, you’re already playing the game...
Yes I have. Got the black boxes I was after and, after listening long and hard, saw the value in the SLs in my system. I wasn't saying people shouldn't go for it if they have the system and the money, but.......I would be very interested in hearing a ND555/PS555/NAC552/NAP500/SLs (or similar) combination with Naims Power Cables, versus an NDS/PS555/NAC252/SC/NAP300/SLs (or similar) combination with high end Anzus Power Cables. Which from my reckoning will cost about the same. And that's without the distribution block which if felt essential to the power first challenge would reduce the Anzus system to a NDX/XPS/282/HiCap level system from a cost comparison perspective. Whilst limitations in a power supply can stop equipment performing at their optimum, the limitations in the equipment itself will mean that there is only so much a component is able to give.
Like I mentioned earlier when I first heard the Ansuz D-TC power cord it went from the wall to my MainzD8 power distribution. Something that shocked me besides the lower noise floor was we could play the music almost twice as loud. That was a demo in my home with the prototype cable (20K for 2M USD retail). That said with the Mainz D-TC power distribution you can play almost twice as loud again (23K USD retail). Yes I own both 