If there is one thing that raises the hackles of engineers, it is audiophiles' insistence that power cords affect sound quality. But at CES, AudioQuest's Garth Powell (right in photo, with AQ's Alex Brinkmann) was showing how changing just one cable in a system, the one connecting a Simaudio Moon CD player to a Niagara 700 power conditioner, could make or break the system's sound quality. Playing a track from Muddy Waters' Folk Singer, with Moon amplification and Magico S1 Mk.2 speakers, and without changing the volume, Garth compared AudioQuest's new Thunder cable ($700) with AC cables from other companies priced up to $18,000, culminating with the AudioQuest Dragon ($4000).
It was fascinating to hear how different cables accentuated or attenuated various aspects of the sound, such as the attack on the acoustic guitar's treble, the sibilance on Waters' voice, or the space around voice and guitar. Not surprisingly, the AQ cables presented the best-balanced sound, which Powell ascribed in part to better rejection of the RF energy that surrounds us in the connected world. But to hear such obvious differences at all was the real surprise.
