Reading · Cookie’s Corner

We support acoustic musicians playing live in the studio, at events and recorded to the highest fidelity possible. Are you looking for audio guidance, coaching or consultation? Send me an email - support@bluecoastmusic.com

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If you buy two albums at Blue Coast Music, you can get a 3rd one free. Here’s how it works… first buy two downloads. After purchase, send us an email with your invoice, choice of the 3rd album and format you’d like us to put into your online account. Send an email to support@bluecoastmusic.com

Suggested listening - Track 03 - Queen of Sydney - Art Lande, Paul McCandless, Bruce Williamson - Spirits
https://bluecoastmusic.com/art-paul-bruce/spirits

Changing power cables (or any cable for that matter) has been a controversial subject in the audiophile and professional audio world for a very long time. Whenever I see a laughing emoji in a social media post about cable, I’ve learned to ignore reading it. When I see or hear the words “snake oil,” I walk away. It’s anger management at its best.

What I will say is that if you can’t hear the difference, feel glad you are free from the price tag. Owning a studio for 40 years we get a lot of free gear to test, so I’m in a lucky position. But sometimes, we have every excuse for not inserting the gear into the system—mostly, we don’t have the time to thoroughly test or move the gear. Who wants to kick up decades of dust behind all that gear?

But last week was different. We had to move the power supply for our 48 channel mixing console while we reconstruct the studio. Understand the console serves many purposes… playback of various two-track systems and mixing from 48 channels. All of this goes out to 5 various speaker/amp systems for comparison listening when we’re mastering, mixing or recording.

While we were mastering a solo piano project from DSD, I got a wild hair to change the power cable and compare. We had installed an upgrade (I’ll call Blue) many years ago but putting in the original cable (I’ll call Black) was eye opening. The Black cable had more bottom mid and less gritty highs - on all 5 speaker systems. At the time I thought, leave the Black cable in. But sleeping on it and listening the next day, I realized I prefer a little more grit on the high end than a muddy sound.

But there was a third option—we’ll call it Gold. We tried that and it was the immediate winner. Suddenly, the same music had depth and perspective, high and lows all in balance…. and on all the speaker systems it was the obvious winner. One power cable improved 5 listening systems. Not bad.

It could be Gold was the most expensive power cable I owned. Specially made for us by the manufacturer. We were using it elsewhere in our recording chain at the time. This new sound effected so much of our listening that we had to keep this on the console power supply.

After that, we tried mixing and matching various power cables with speaker/amps and found that some power cables sounded better with certain speakers. It was amazing how the cables not only affected the depth and frequencies but also the image clarity. That could help or deter your listening environment.

But let’s face it….. do you hear the difference the next day? Unless you’re comparing, maybe not. But I do think you feel the difference and want to listen to music more when it’s a smooth and lovely ride.

A bigger reality is that most music isn’t recorded in a way that a power cable will make a difference. For us, recording, mixing and mastering music every day can be exhausting on the ears. A great listening environment makes a hugh difference for tackling an especially difficult project.

The suggested track - Queen of Sydney - is the track we used to compare. Piano, oboe and flute recorded to DSD. Qobuz has the non compressed Audiophile Edition master.

If you want to know what the cables were, write to us directly at support@bluecoastmusic.com and put “Cables” in the subject.

For more listening…
enjoy a playlist of music that I’ve recorded, mixed or mastered over the decades. More than 48 hours of tracks from all genres of music (not just my Blue Coast Records recordings. :) Some tracks might surprise you. Shuffle and play.

Qobuz -
https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/24982748

Tidal -
https://tidal.com/playlist/40012258-926a-4130-9364-5cc7b3ed2661

Youtube -
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiWDrjNeis2Wb5DNSwFkESHFCCEV64gKm

Thanks for reading and
Enjoy your listening!

Cookie Marenco
Founder and Producer Blue Coast Records and Music

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