Well, a REALLY GOOD GUY, Rick left and is on his way back home, praying for safe travels.
We had a wonderful visit, wonderful for me for sure!!!!!
Rick is a man of great taste!!!! Great taste in music, audio equipment and coffee!!!!!
AND, you guys are right, I was wrong, the Audience PC did make an audible difference and a GOOD one at that!!!!
An improvement to be sure!!!!!!
I bought it from Rick!!!! Would not let him take it back home with him!!!!!
Much more on our visit, trials, and travails, as my system chose this time to act up, big time!!!!!
But that and further evaluation and comments to come.
Bed time here,
God Bless,
Wayne

Wayne,

I'm very sorry to hear that you heard an improvement, because you know what that means: ANOTHER BLACK HOLE FOR MONEY!

But, in the end, it's worth it! I think.

Charlie

Thanks Charlie for the commiserations.

Well I might not have been surprised, probably could have expected this result
IF
I had a plain old, came with the product, usual, normal power cord on, stock PC as they are called.
BUT
NO
We put the Audience Forte F3 PowerChord, their entry level PC so far as I know, on my Emotiva XMC-1 pre-processor, where the DAC resides and it replaced the best cable I had in my system, the Furutech PCOCC cable.
A LOT of people, like my wife, would have said that I had already invested in high end power cables.
The fact that the Audience audibly bested the Furutech surprised and impressed me!!!!
More on the listening tests in a bit.
God Bless,
Wayne

I readily admit, always have that I don't have "golden ears" the best hearing.
And when Rick and I changed out my Furutech PC on my Emotiva XMC-1, for the Audience Forte F3, I was not expecting to hear any change at all. We had listened to quite a bit of music before the change out, LOTS really. Then after changing cords, we let it burn in around 10 hours, playing music, TV, whatever, we were not listening critically.
Before, we had listened to a couple of songs on the Eagles Farewell Tour in Melbourne, Australia, New Kid in Town and Hotel California in particular, one or two more partially. And although it sounded good, there was a lot of brightness, sibilance, a rough edge on vocals, drums, trumpet was pretty good though as was guitar.
Rick reckoned that the new PC would tame that brightness and sibilance. I doubted that it would, but figured that IF it did, it would also darken or knock off the beautiful highs I like in all my other music.
Well, he was right, with the Audience in place, Rick was hearing lots of improvements across the board (I heard no faults, but with one ear plugged and not sitting in my main listening position I was not hearing all the improvements he did), and sure enough the sibilance was tamed greatly, the rough edges on the vocals was pretty much gone, shine and shimmer were still there on cymbals, etc. but the harshness was gone. AND I could never identify any music that had lost any good thing, there was improvement across all music and movies, or at the very least no change that I could hear. He could though.
And I could hear it in some places. I had no doubt, the longer we listened, the more we listened, music and movie sound too was fullsome in bass, clear as a bell highs with no harshness and mids/vocals were spot on.
In fact, that is the term we used the most, SPOT ON!!!!
All my music put a smile on my face and is continuing to do so now that I am back in the cat bird's seat.
With not a thing not to like. That is amazing to me.
I do not understand it.
I do not put it down to high expectations, audiophile prejudices, "wouldn't expensive stuff sound more cool' theory as I had none, in fact, almost the opposite, I 100% expected no changes.
But I was wrong. In fact, I am pretty sure the Audience cable is actually cheaper than what I paid for the Furutech!!!!
Will listen more and report back if I hear more. And hope Rick, who has much better hearing than I do, report if he wants to.
God Bless,
Wayne

Hey, Wayne

Your description of the sound quality we heard with your already amazing system helped along a bit by the Audience PC cleaning things a little more is "SPOT ON" also!

I remain in awe of GET speakers' ability to reward every single nudge we give them with further refined but still distinctly that Goldenear sound. Your system sounded great the very first time I heard it, and was awesome as we kept listening after getting the T2's channel working again and the nudge from the Audience. Goosebumps.while listening and well fed Goldenear speakers seem to go hand in hand!

Happy continuing listening!

Rick

WayneWilmeth wrote: Rick reckoned that the new PC would tame that brightness and sibilance. I doubted that it would, but figured that IF it did, it would also darken or knock off the beautiful highs I like in all my other music.

...the rough edges on the vocals was pretty much gone, shine and shimmer were still there on cymbals, etc. but the harshness was gone.

...clear as a bell highs with no harshness and mids/vocals were spot on.

...I 100% expected no changes.

Wayne and Rick,

I experienced all of these things too. Definitely a reduction in harshness, and as for "clear as a bell", percussion bells sound unbelievably good. As does everything else.

I didn't expect any changes either, but boy they are there. I hesitate to say this, but I think the changes are more profound than when I went to high-end interconnects and speaker cables. And those produced big changes.

Go figure.

The Nelson Pass "interview" in Stereophile sheds some light on what is going on. To paraphrase, the series upstream resistance (impedance) prevents the power supply from fully recharging in fast, high demand situations. Thus, the component output waveform doesn't reach the full value it should, which is a form of distortion. Distortion produces harmonics that aren't in the music, and voila! harshness appears.

Wayne, if you have really crappy power there, the ultimate step would be a regenerator. That would eliminate all of the upstream problems. Expensive, but....I'm thinking seriously about getting one for my system. I didn't think the power here was that bad, but now I wonder. I'm at the end of a block and the last guy on the line. So who knows?

Charlie