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  Cable Products > Lab II Cables Lab II Cable More Info Starting at just $399.00! We introduced the Lab Cable in April 2000 and, from that date onwards, we have been selling more than we can build. These revolutionary new hand-built power cables have literally redefined the standards of power cables.  Those customers that have taken the time to try one at home have been literally 'blown away' with the improvements.'As soon as we put in the Lab II from the wall directly to the amp, the soundstage increased by at least 30%. Now think about that. Our jaws just dropped. That is not a little, but huge. Of course, there was so much more information being retrieved in that additional space. Just damn scary. ' Lowell Graham What are Lab Cables? Simply stated, they are the best power delivery system we have ever heard, bar none. With the ability to deliver power to your equipment, Power Plant, or Ultimate Outlet, this custom designed and built cable is based on sound engineering principals, high value, and good common sense. No exotic Unobtanium metals, no use of Audiophile blessed super conducting faster than the speed of light materials of any kind. What the Lab Cable does offer, is an eye-opening level of performance (or jaw dropping?). Rich in copper and surface area, robust in its level of shielding, the Lab Cable is the single best power cord we have ever heard, at any price.  Are you looking for a huge system improvement?We don't know who isn't. But, if you are looking for an immediate improvement in mid bass, lower bass and imaging in your system, we can't think of a more affordable piece of equipment than a Lab Cable. Adding one or more of these power delivery cables yields a major sonic advantage. In fact, compared to virtually any other power cable we have ever auditioned, the Lab Cables stand head and shoulders above the rest. Our customers have described their former cables as 'wimpy' and' thin', relative to the Lab Cable. 'My amp can take a full breath. What was once a very good amp, has become a Krell-killer (at half the price). I just received your PS Lab Cable AC cord. This thing isn't even 'broken in', but what a DRAMATIC improvement already! I have Classe's excellent CA301 high current beast, and was using a ****** Q5 power cord, but let me tell you, the LAB CABLE smashes it! With NO other changes in my system, the bass, dynamics, soundstage (especially W-I-D-T-H) has been astounding!' The Lab Cable offers an unprecedented level of full, rich sound, with lightning fast transients, improved dynamic contrasts, and dead quiet performance. We encourage any of you interested to take either a Mini Lab or a Lab Cable home for a test drive. This is one hot cable, and yes, it DOES make a difference. The story of the Lab Cable It's funny how things are. What started out as a messy, klunky, hand made power cord for the lab turned out to sound so perfect, that we just had to figure out a way to build it.  Humble beginningsWhenever we design a new piece of gear for the high end audio market, the final design stage is called 'voicing'. Voicing simply means that we hand tune the circuitry by ear, listening to the new circuit on our reference audio system. When we began work on the Power Plant, we quickly realized that we didn't have the tools necessary to properly voice the Plant. We had the reference system, which at that time consisted of a combination of Audio Research, Sonic Frontiers, CEC transport and Genesis 350 loudspeakers. What we lacked was a power cord neutral enough to not add its voice into the mix. We certainly didn't want to adjust the audible benefits of the Power Plant around one type of power cord, what we needed was a completely neutral reference cable. Finding such a cable was not easy. From the most expensive over $2,000 per meter cable to an off the shelf shielded Belden, all the cords exhibited some sonic characteristics of their own. This wouldn't do! What was needed was a monster of a cord, with lots of surface area, lots of copper, and lots of shielding. So, we made our own. Look at the results in the picture here on the right. First, you need a LOT of copper  To do this, we used 6 gauge 1057 strand copper for each conductor. This is huge! To put that in perspective, the largest power conductor we found in an Audiophile power cord was 10 Gauge, which measured approximately 0.1 inches thick. 6 gauge measures nearly 0.25 inch thick! Why so thick and with so many strands? Our listening experience over the years has shown that the more copper we can add, the fuller and less lean the sound: a Litz arrangement (lots of very fine strands of copper) allows for a great amount of detailed transient information to pass. So, the combination of many fine strands of copper, in at least a 6 gauge diameter permits all the energy to pass in an unencumbered manner.Then, a LOT of shielding  As many of us now understand, what comes out of the PS Audio Power Plant is as perfect an AC signal as you can get. But what happens after it leaves the Power Plant? Your 3 foot power cord, or your 6 foot cord is acting like an antenna, picking up all sorts of nasty RF and airborne garbage. So we understand that it is important to shield the inside conductors from this airborne noise. How best to do that? We spoke at great length with engineering people in the communications industry because they have the greatest experience with shielding and noise elimination. What we learned is that the hottest ticket in shielding is known as triple shielding, and expensive commercial cables that use this technique are known as Triaxial cables.To make a Triaxial cable, you first wrap aluminum foil around a jacketed conductor, then you weave a copper braid over the foil, then you add yet another copper braid over that. Each of the three shields will reduce airborne noise by approximately 20 to 35 dB, and so a triaxial cable could conceivably reduce noise by nearly 100 dB. That's quiet! To the left you can see what we wound up with in the original hand made lab cable before we added the Sonex around it. Note the copper braid that is the final protection from airborne noise. We went one step further To build our power cable, we went one step further. We double shielded EACH of the two conductors, and then placed a single braid over both double shielded conductors. This provides about the maximum amount of shielding possible. Then we listened...  We then tested the hand-built model in every possible AB we could and found that this new Lab Cable had as little sonic signature as anything we had ever auditioned before. Because it was designed as a power delivery system, we even tried it out as speaker cable; the results were nothing short of breathtaking!The Lab Cable had all the dynamics, all the energy and everything we had hoped for. The last step was to mechanically isolate the entire cable from vibrations as much as humanely possible. To achieve this, we wrapped the entire cable in Sonex. It was a sight! To the right, a picture of Paul's lab where we built the first cables. Then we built the production version The Lab Cable needed to be built, because there are so few, if any, truly great yet affordable cables in the world today. For a tour of the construction process with lots of photos, click here. Most cables offer better highs, or better lows, but almost always at the expense of another parameter. Important to us, is capturing the accurate timbre of each instrument, with the full body of that instrument intact, and located in a perfect acoustic space. To accomplish this, you must first and foremost perfectly reproduce the essential mid bass of the recording. Without this mid bass information or the 'body' of the instrument intact, both ambient acoustical cues and spatial cues will be lost. It is then more difficult to locate a particular instrument in space, and the instrument will sound less than real. The Lab Cable solves this problem by providing extremely low DC resistance and extremely high surface area for electron flow. Essentially, the Lab Cable works in these areas perhaps better than any cable in the world because of its extreme copper to total area equation (over 1 pound per foot does this cable weigh!). There's nothing better Cables and their performance in a person's system are subjective. This means that while body, mid bass, ambiance, proper space, quick transients etc. were our design goals, they may not necessarily be yours. There are many Audiophiles and Videophiles that enjoy the extra 'zing' provided by many cables because it helps other problems in their system. Zingy cables, or cables that accentuate one area of the audio spectrum for another are of no interest to us.  The Lab Cable and Mini Lab Cables are near perfect conductors and their main benefits are those recognized by most experts in power delivery systems as optimal. We strongly urge anyone interested in seeing if the cable is right for your system and for your tastes to arrange for an in home audition of either an Lab Cable, or a Mini Lab Cable.Even though the Lab Cable is relatively expensive, it is quite a bargain knowing what it costs to manufacture or as compared to other high end manufacturers. One of the ways we kept the price down is by avoiding what the cable industry refers to as 'jewelry'. Jewelry refers to the machined pieces of metal, plastic, etc. that many high end companies add to their cables to pretty up the termination. We avoided this because it has a rather dramatic impact on the eventual cost of the cable to you, the customer. How much do the Lab Cables cost? Pricing for the Lab Cable is based on a per cable, terminated price:
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