This is quite an easy question to answer.
What happens when you upgrade a power cord in your system? What happens when you clean the sockets, contacts and plug pins in your system?
Certain members here will trot out a story about emporer’s clothes. It’s a story. Not a story are placebos in the Pharmaceutical industry. Because some people can imagine positive effects, does that mean that all drugs are suspect and don’t work? Of course it doesn’t. And so it is with hi-fi.
Rule number ONE in hi-fi....everything affects the sound.....some things a little, some a lot. But sometimes small changes are big and big changes small. Why? Because a change in itself isn’t important....its the level of enjoyment you achieve with the change that makes ALL the difference. Have you noticed that some upgrades you make seem to bring a huge positive initial change, but 2 weeks later you’re not enjoying your system and the music any more than you did before the upgrade? Whereas other changes.....for example the removal of a slight hardness or harshness from the sound bring a real lasting increase in enjoyment? Well that’s the sort of change better quality sockets and cable will bring. Typically it makes music more musical...less ‘electronic’, it removes hardness and harshness from the sound, bringing greater ease and naturalness to the music.
By running a dedicated mains to your system, you effectively remove all the household noise from switches, motors, cheap power supplies and chargers etc. It will bring a major improvement. Building that dedicated supply with high quality (from a sonic standpoint) components you’ll achieve 2 more things. A major increase in the enjoyment level of your system AND the minimisation of deterioration over time as the myriad connections within that supply corrode and/or loosen off over time. Gold is there because it doesn’t oxidise, better sockets ensure more secure clamping of conductors and better, more secure grip on plug pins. Gold fuses minimise corrosion and improve the contact between the fuse and its holder.
Substitute a standard mains cable with a higher quality Naim product and you’ll hear an improvement in sound quality. Do the same for your entire system by substituting high quality supply cable and sockets and the improvement is more profound.
