Long ago when there were no aftermarket power cables I started work on the first. The idea for a cable better than what we included in the box came out of curiosity. If the stock cables I experimented with made such a difference in sound, what would happen if I simply made a power cable from the same material found in the walls feeding AC outlets? I crafted such a cable using solid core Romex, duplicating the 14 gauge in the wall and was promptly shocked at the improvement over the stranded, 14 gauge courtesy cable we included in new equipment.
My first thought was a question. Does this finding mean the stranded courtesy cable is so much worse than what is in the wall, or is there more going on? Clearly, if you replace the one with the other and it gets better, there's not a lot of debate as to which is worse. But why? And is it that solid core is so much better? The two examples were the same gauge. The more I compared the two cables, the greater my understanding of what I was hearing. The stranded courtesy cable was thin, lacking in bass and fullness, but helped the music's upper end. The solid core Romex had bass aplenty, yet sounded almost over damped on the top end.
And mostly, I liked the way the Romex homemade cable sounded. Clearly there was something wrong with the courtesy cable. But what?
