I am not an audiophile. Really, I’m not. Nor have I stayed in a Holiday Inn recently. Surprising, I know. As such, I take zero credit for the sound system that graces my living room. I merely just spent the money. That said, for a non audiophile, like myself, putting together even a mid level sound system definitely required guidance.
Fortunately, I happen to know a guy who is extremely knowledgeable about all things sound. Speakers, amplifiers, preamps, cables, and while not a vinyl fanatic, even turntables. This guy also happens to be one of my oldest and closest friends. So when I called him last year and told him I wanted to upgrade he got to work researching what would work best for me, in the space I had, and what would fit the WAF: Wife Approval Factor.
Don’t even judge dudes, you know it’s a thing.
After several hours of conversation, conference calls with his partners and actually visiting listening rooms to pick out the right speakers, he had the perfect system put together. It looks nice (WAF: check) and sounds fantastic. There was one thing missing. Power.
This guy, let’s call him Michael (mostly because that’s his name), is one of the owners of Finley Audio. Besides consulting, Finley Audio makes high end audiophile grade cables. In this case specifically, power cables. We had an opportunity to visit not long ago and Michael brought with him Finley’s three tiers of power cables to test on my new system. Admittedly, I was skeptical. A simple power cable would actually make a noticeable difference in the sound quality? I knew a tiny bit about power cables from a previous life, but I was not at all prepared for what happened when he plugged in his Cirrus power cable into the PS Audio Sprout. This is not a “simple” power cable.
Before we started, Michael measured out approximately where the sweet spot was between my speakers (where I sit now), and proceeded to play music chosen specifically to exhibit what you can hear and experience with a high quality power cable on even a mid level system such as mine. I was completely blown away. When we got to music I knew, I was hearing things in songs I had been listening to for decades that I had never heard before. With the addition of the Cirrus cable, the clarity and detail now coming through the Monitor Audio Silver 100 7G speakers was shocking. And thus, I was converted.
Worth noting: The Cirrus is Finley Audio’s flagship power cable and is priced accordingly. I did NOT pay full price. A discount was applied. The “lower tier” cables provided excellent results as well, and would be a vast improvement over a stock power cable.
I’m still not an audiophile. We know this. Perhaps you’re not either. But I’ll tell you this for free, the quality of your power cables matter. Probably more than you think.
If you need one, I know a guy.
Vertical Separation 