The Thousand Dollar Power Cable

Power cords are like wine. With wine you can talk about terroir, climate, the care in harvesting, age of the vines, etcetera, etcetera. Yet. often times a $12 bottle of wine literally crushes a $40+ dollar bottle when it comes to flavor, balance and complexity. When in doubt, we often buy wine based on the label, or the price. Surely that $50 bottle is vastly superior to the $25, right? This tendency also translates very well in audio. The shiny box, hyper pure metallurgy, fancy buzzwords and carbon fibered rhodium connectors sound and LOOK like they'd sound better, so that's what we go for when choosing between power cords that we are unfamiliar with. We are also very loyal to brands that have earned their reputation for quality and a certain house sound. That's all good. But, once in awhile an outlier, an unknown has to challenge Big Audio brands with something that is better. How does this unknown get your attention? Usually with a low price, a funny name, or outrageous hyperbole. I don't know about you but I, even as a dealer and manufacturer am suffering from Hyperbole Fatigue.

So I gave this cord a name and price that would get your attention, because I am not a Big Audio manufacturer. But, with much experience in listening to many, many power cords, I know this is a product that punches well above it's price point. So much so that I have put the Craft Audio brand name behind it. The great news is it doesn't cost a fortune.

We have been building and testing audiophile power cords for years. Using the finest materials, and investing a small fortune in expectation that this will be the giant killer power cord. We have had moderate success, but also these cords with fancy name brand conductors and connectors cost more to build than what we are selling this cord for. Sometimes you ignore what the reviewers, and marketers are telling us what makes a great sounding power cord, and you get lucky. That sort of happened here. We got lucky to a degree, and then we added some Tweek Geek magic.

This cord is not fancy. It's 10 awg stranded OFC copper. They use cotton to separate the conductors, which is good and sounds better than polypropylene or nylon. It's jacketed in the usual, and we put a nice cloth like tech flex over everything. The conductors are copper, with gold plated screw terminals internally. They have a nice silver carbon fiber looking housing. But let's be honest, they are nothing you can't by from China for $20 for a set. None of this makes for exciting reading, but in our listening tests we heard good balance and wide bandwidth. Nothing stood out, and that was a perfect foundation.

We took the cord to the next level after throwing all of our ideas at it. A couple of them worked together to lower the noise floor, and open up the soundstage much more dramatically than the stock wire and connectors. We built enough to outfit the reference audio system.

• QSA Gold Router
• QSA Gold Switch
• Innuos Statement
• Merason DAC-1
• Audio Hungary XP200 or Modwright KWH 225i
• QLN Prestige 5, or our favorite, the Aurai Audio Z215 with Kef Subs engaged
• EP200 KIYORA power conditioner

It's not a bad system, as anyone who has come in to our Dripping Springs store will tell you. We can easily discern cable and tweak contributions, or detractions, and are very familiar with the sound. They sounded absolutely great. Not the very last word in resolution, but balanced, open, and wide bandwidth. No odd colorations that fatigued our ears after a few hours, just good, musical sound that we could be happy with for a long time. We would easily put the Thousand Dollar PC up against any cord in the $1000 price range, and are confident that it would most likely outperform the competitors on balance, musicality, and long-term enjoyment.

We've spent a lot of time with these cords, and we love them. If you love neutrality, a nice 3D soundstage and saving money, these cords might be worth a listen.

In-Home Auditions

To encourage ttrying our power cords, we offer you our in-home trial, where we can send you up to 4 cords of 1.5 or 2 meter lengths for a week to 10 days. We would need the following information from you:

• How many cords and what length
• Your shipping details
• A credit card to put on file for security

Once we have that information we will put you in the queue for the in-home audition.

If you are in the market for a well made, ultra-high value power cord that is balanced, engaging, holographic, and you don't need to leverage your house to buy it, this may be exactly what you are looking for.