Sensibly-priced mains cable upgrades (<£200/€300)?

[hk6230]

Hi Atoine,

First, my comments are not meant to disrespect or disapprove anyone on their tweakings or enhancements. So I hope you don't get offended.

Secondly, I do believe everyone has different setups, interconnects, music sources, speakers, room acoustics, and even different hearing conditions. So, everyone will hear differently than others. I was once being upset by all the remarks from a group of Octave amps users who keeps saying Devialet was a toy and that I should grown up and join them by using Octave. I would only say that these group of people are being 'brainwashed' or 'conditioned' to the sound of Octave and anything else are not 'pure' music. And, I believe I have met quite a few of these 'religiously' fanatics about their systems.

My point of views had come down to this, regardless what others say, as long as my system allows me to listen to it for a long period of time without feeling fatigue and it keeps getting me to sing along sometimes, and even getting me to tap my feet, then I believe it is good (if not great) enough for me. In this forum, we even have owners who will spend more money on the isolators than a Devialet. Are they wrong? I don't think so, but to me I won't spend such amount of monies on isolators for any kind of improvements.

Mind you, I have used/tried quite a few of gadgets or improvements such as iFi iUSBpower, Mercury USB cables, iPurifier, Linear power supply, isolators, speaker stands, power cords, and interconnects before I jumped into Devialet. To be honest, I started quite late (only two years ago) into this hobby. What I like most about Devialet was its AIR feature, which allows me to free away from all expensive interconnects and enhancements such as Regen, iPurifier, iUSBpower, and such. I'm sure these devices will add improvements to any system, but that will defeat the purpose of owning a Devialet which supposedly to free us all of these. Again, it's okay for anyone to keep tweaking to draw the last bits of improvement in our system. It's your money and it's your choice. In fact, I, myself, will occasionally fall into the temptations and try out some of these gadgets, too. At the end, I remove them to have a cleaner hifi rack. It's my personal choice. Like all, I have experienced white noises with AIR, and I have to change from Mac Mini to NUC, and finally settled on Win10 which gives me 99% trouble-free AIR performance. AIR works for me doesn't imply everyone must use or agree with me.

Back to the topic about power cords, I do hear (or maybe placebo effects) differences when I swap power cords. Highest end power cord for me is the Shunyata Anaconda. Some improve the clarity, some on the bass and some even on the soundstage. At the end, again, I chose aesthetic over quality, by using Audioquest NRG-X3. Oh, I forgot, I even have the wall receptacle changed from a Chinese one to an American wall plug. And, I have also tried some low-end streamers like Sonos Connect and Bluesound Node. Bluesound has better hardware specs than Sonos, but I settled on Sonos for my everyday radio and Chinese music services streaming.

Anyway. I'm just a novice here. I just wanted to share my opinions. Right or wrong, and whether others accept them, it doesn't bother me.

Again, I never wanted to offend anyone here. Devialetchat is by far the best forum I have spent my most time on and all of us sharing our experiences with our Devialets are fun.

P.S. Gee, this is the longest post I have ever written.