Background

Battling Jitter to the extreme, we have found it beneficial to externally filter the mains power before it even enters a component. After two years of experimentation with many standard outboard power filtering methods, it was evident that extreme amounts of capacitance are required. Combinations using transformers and much capacitance yielded better results. But the transformers needed so much headroom in terms of power handling that the project was quickly overtaking grand proportions, bordering on impractical implementation with several expensive transformers larger than most audio devices themselves.

In the end we admit that, although extreme filtering was producing the desired background blackness, it was reducing true musical dynamics. Developing the last link, the mains cable itself, we found that it was possible to achieve even better audible results by carrying out the filtering in the cable itself. Transformers (due to hysteresis and voltage losses) and capacitors (due to resistive losses) were not as effective.

Why make a less conductive power cable?

Time and again we are confronted with the question about why some manufacturers create special cable designs for low power consumption digital gear, and other, different cable designs for high power consumption amplifiers. There may be a taste issue here, or else a lack of insight into the qualitative issues at stake when creating the best possible power cord.

Resistance happens to not only be a quantitative factor, but to contain other qualitative factors as well! When one is seeking the top possible sound quality from a power cord, it is not only important to keep the resistance to a minimum, but take heed of these qualitative factors as well. This has to do with metallurgical processing, in which there are a plethora of theories, and tried and yet untried experiments. Different metal matrix composites as well as their structural crystalline manipulation affect the audible results greatly, as does the measurable traditional value of resistance, but in different ways. These qualitative factors are beyond those described by measurement alone. But they do not make resistance any less important, and that is why we offer our power cord in only one design for all gear -- because it works as well as we can make it work. Simple as that. There is no known gear (that we have ever encountered) which sounds better using a power cord of greater electrical resistance. Anyone who can claim this is probably not being completely honest, or else has a taste which is not founded on acoustical experience, but on some notion borne only in their own imagination.

My late father was a research chemist. He used to say, "If you can't say it in numbers, you don't know what you're talking about." Even though very many empirical tests continue to be run with a variety of concepts and theories, always attempting to quantify as many parameters as possible, we run into uncharted territory when we stumble upon phenomena which can only be described as a type of "synergy effect", yet unexplainable in greater detail. The most likely explanation we can come up with so far is that each material has a different high frequency absorption spectrum, and together these spectrums combine and intermodulate in very interesting ways! There is more to be learned about this here: LessLoss Blackbody

Hand-Built and High-Tech

I am sure you will not only find the LessLoss DFPC's a great value, but also, in their cumulative effect, you will enjoy the deep silence that the music springs up from -- not from a backdrop of hazy noise, but a backdrop of sincere silence, as if the gear itself were listening to the music with you. The feeling is uncanny at first but quickly addictive as one realizes: this just feels right. This is the way it is supposed to be.

As Grebennikov once said, the organism felt it, while the instruments remained silent.