Why power cables don't matter in High End audio systems

I have a fairly high end audio system at home. The reason is simple, not that's anybody's concern but i like to listen to music in good conditions so that warrants a good, above average sound system for me.

I sometimes am asked, and advised to buy expensive audio cables, silver plated, gold plated, thin, thick, covered in pink unicorn fart paint, etc.

I don't. I build my own audio cables, why i do that, it's not the point of this post, power cables are.

Yeah, i use regular IEC power cables, which mostly came with the equipment i bought or from my stash of PC power cables.

They look ... plain, regular, boring, however they are not meant to impress anybody. They are black, blend well into the environment and they are not the centerpiece of my system. They need to do one job and one job only: conduct current.

Back when, my god parent (who's a painter) and I, had long discussions about cables. Granted he's the main person that got me into Hifi, but i'm also an electrical engineer by education and some things he was trying to convince me of did not make any sense at the time. They still don't but more about that in a future article.

Ok, back to power chords. Here's the short version: Power cords mostly do not matter in a high end audio system. Do yourself a solid and invest in something else, like better speakers :)

I say mostly, because there's only one thing that matter, and that's common sense (for some at least).

Let's think about how a sound system looks like (simplified version):

All you see in the above, is the signal path, from your source, which can be a CD Player, Turntable, Digital to Analog converter, etc to the speakers, all that is the signal path.

While all of the above, except speakers (to some extent) need power from your place power outlets, nowhere you will find that power from the outlet, directly linked to the signal path.

But the signal, in the signal path, it's generated by using power from the outlet, isn't it ? Yes it is, but it can also be generated by using power from a battery or other power sources than outlets, so that does not matter.

What matters is that that outlet power, get used in a very particular way, with the exception of the turntable, which does not require external power other than turning the motor to generate the signal, it's the cartridge that's a very small voltage generator by itself.

Suppose you have a CD Player, powered from the outlet. Your outlet carries (based on where you're at) between 110 and 240 volts of Alternating Current (see this Wikipedia article in case you forgot middle school physics).

Most of the stuff we use in audio work with Direct Current (here on Wikipedia) and also at much lower voltages than the main outlet carries, so that outlet high voltage needs to be converted to a lower voltage and then converted to DC by way of a rectifier (Wikipedia again)

Simple rectifier circuits kind of expects the input voltage to be of a constant value (RMS voltage) so if your mains outlet has voltage swings, the voltage at the output of a simple rectifier also varies, which is not good for most circuits.

However, high end gear, do not have overly simplistic rectifier circuits, and even if they had, what difference would an expensive power cable make ?

Good high end gear have rectifiers which are well filtered, they have enough "power banks" (large power supply capacitors which can tackle the drops in voltage) that can supply the downstream circuits.

Think of like this, you have a plastic water pipe that can pass, say 1 metric cube of water every minute. If you buy a more expensive metal water pipe, with the same diameter, you will still have 1 metric cube of water every minute, right ?

Using the above analogy, the only thing that really matters with power cables is the wire gauge which needs to be thick enough to handle the current draw of your equipment, otherwise the cable will heat up, increase cable resistance due to thermal agitations of the wire's atoms, and will start dropping voltage, which in turn will increase the current drawn which will cause more heat and will eventually catch fire (head about it here)

It's as "simple" as that, the thicker the cable, the safer you are.

I'm also told, what about Radio Frequency interference. Well if you have issues with RFI on your power lines, then you leave near the Large Hadron Collider or your neighbour is really trying his DIY cyclotron. Get better gear, because your power supply is not properly filtered by using really simple methods, hence it's shit and a 5000 EUR power cable is not going to change that.

RFI on your power cord is very very less likely to happen, it does happen on the signal cables, not power.

There's nothing about electrons flowing "more" freely on cryogenated cable, twisted cable, cable that's gold plated (mind you, gold is not a very good conductor anyway, compared to copper), electricity flows thru your regular 1 eur/meter 3x1.5mm cable as fine as thru the 1000 euro / meter one.

Of course, you are free to buy the 40 EUROs audiophile 1.5 amps fuses, see if that makes a difference. Oh yeah, it will, you just spend 40 euros on it, you're not going to say it doesn't.