Put up some photos David Elrod sent us. Nice!
They are several pages of photos here: Elrod Statement Powercords and Interconnects
We just got a sample case yesterday – hope to have some initial feedback soon.
This just MUST be power cord season – first the ODIN, then we finally get our Prana Wire Satori, and now these.
What is a poor boy [and girl] to do?
Except smile?
Not only is there a part II that is to be posted on the magazine in the next few days, a continuation of the Shootout at the Powercord Corral [a name which is an unfortunate side-effect of living in cattle country :-)] – but we also got the Prana Wire Satori, and soon an Elrod prototype [photos forthcoming], to throw into the fray.
Not sure when we are going to get to do this particular shootout – perhaps over Christmas… it’d be something fun to do with our, uh, perhaps somebody here will be getting some music for the holidays… ? Uh, but don’t know for sure….. never can tell, right? *I* certainly am NOT getting Neli music or anything like that [she thinks I am, but that is just to lead her away from what I am really getting her – just like this blog post will confuse her, along with the rest of you out there… ;-)].
As people may (or may not, it has been awhile) remember – we have been trying to determine how effectatious, sonically, it is to burn in the ElRod power cords on the Nordost ViDar cable burn-in device.
The short and sweet is… not that much.
We tried this on the low-power ELROD EPS-2 Signature power cables. One was on the ViDar for 2 weeks or so. One wasn’t. For this test we put both in the system for two weeks and then compared them – trying them both on the Emm Labs CDSA player and both on the Audio Note CDT3 transport.
Neli heard no difference and I thought the un-vidar’ed power cord might have a wee little better separation and emotion… in both tests … but un-ViDar’ed cord was always tried after the other cord and maybe I was just settling into the song a little better? Perhaps. In any case, the differences are so subtle, compared to what we usually talk about on this blog, as to be insignificant.
Anyway, the conclusions we reached was that the ViDar, designed for low power interconnects and cables, on which the ViDar kicks tush – does not seem to have much effect on correspondingly high current power cords. At least not these cords on these components.
In fact, the taking off of the power cord, and letting its internal capacitors discharge for about 30 seconds during our swap in and outs during this test (as we rushed one upstairs and the other downstairs to quickly put them on the other system during this test – trying to keep them charged up] might have had more effect on the sound. Hard to tell.
So that is our next test for the ELRODs – charged versus un-charged. It takes about 3 – 7 days for the power cord’s capacitance to fully charge, so we will compare one that has been in the system for awhile versus one that has not. A test that does not allow us to go back and forth – i.e. to repeat the test except once every seven days. And it requires us to have a power cord just sitting around doing nothing – not something that we can afford here these days with all four systems fully operational.
But I guess we are doing it anyway.
The power cord with the ‘V’ tag Neli put on it to designated its ViDar’ed status. Otherwise things might get a wee bit confusing… now WHICH cord was that again?
The EPS-2 Signatures are about 1/2 the size of the high-powered ELRODs.
The cord on the back of the EMMLabs CDSA.
The Audio Note CDT-Three transport. It is not hooked up because…
… several of our HRS M3 Isolation Bases and Neli were out on audition during this photo shoot. So the HRS SXR and MXR racks were looking like Macy’s the day after Christmas [OK, yes, so I have been watching a lot of old movies lately].
