Of the hundreds of products we've reviewed over the past 11 plus years in Church Production, we've never looked at anything so seemingly mundane as an after-market power cord. What possible difference could a power cord make on the sound of an amplifier?
Enter Michael Griffin, founder and president of Rochester, Mich.-based ESP - Essential Sound Products. I first met Michael at the AES (Audio Engineering Society) Show in New York late last year. An old friend and colleague was helping Michael work his booth. So, as a favor to my friend I stopped by to hear the story of ESP's patented multi-gauge power cable design.
To be honest, I was very skeptical-especially the part where Michael described the "slow current delivery speed" of most stock power cables. "How much faster can you get than the speed of light?" I thought. I smiled politely as I listened to Griffin's story of how he came up with the initial design for cords by combining his personal interest as an audiophile with his engineering background designing fuel injection systems for General Motors.
ESP's booth at AES listed the names of a number of bass players who endorse the power cords. But AES is not a musician's show. It's an engineering show, a place where sound engineers (live and studio), system designers, consultants, dealers and contractors come to see the latest in pro audio.
When Michael learned that I was a bass player he offered to send me one of his MusicCord Pro power cords to try. I was able to try out the cord a few weeks later while playing bass for my church's worship team.
I immediately heard a difference, but asked for the opinion of several other people on the worship team: one has a degree in electrical engineering, the other is a long-time sound engineer and our church's technical director. We couldn't agree on exact wording of what it was that we heard through my bass amp (Gallien-Krueger 400 RB head through an Electro-Voice B210 cabinet), only that we heard a difference, and it was an improvement. To me the sound had more depth...like it had more dimension. To several other listeners the sound was more dynamic.
The more I talked to Michael Griffin about it the more I noticed that he was careful not to color my perception. He never told me exactly what I would hear, only that I would hear a difference.
Had the evaluation ended there, we probably would never have published the review since we're not a musician's magazine. We don't cover musical instruments, guitar or bass amps, etc. But Michael and I began to discuss some of the other uses for these cords. Though his products are best known among home stereo enthusiasts and bass players, he says they are used by recording studio and live sound engineers. He then offered to send 14 MusicCord Pro cords, enough for us to rewire our entire church sound system: a QSC Wideline loudspeaker system in a left-center-right configuration, powered by QSC PowerLite Series amplifiers and a Yamaha DM2000 board. Michael was on-hand at our church the day we swapped the cords and did our initial tests, which consisted of listening to various reference CD's.
We heard a difference, it was just difficult to describe exactly what it was. Later in the demonstration, Michael said that he recommends eight to ten hours of "break-in" time for the amplifiers to acclimate to the way the cords deliver current. Again, I was skeptical. But Michael offered to let us keep the cords in place for several weeks so the system could "acclimate" and we could listen under a range of conditions with a variety of live music.
In the weeks since the cords were initially installed at our church, Essential Sound Products released additional data on their own evaluations of how the patented cords change an amplifier's performance. The company report shows, "the amplifier exhibited up to a 1.3 dB increase in peak amplitude when using the MusicCord Pro cord, with the average waveforms adjusted to eliminate average volume shift. Also, there's evidence that a timing shift occurs where the amplifier responds faster when using the ESP cord."
ESP's own technical data supports the varying descriptions we gathered in our independent listening tests on the bass rig, and on the church's PA system. Some say the sound has more "presence". Others say it's more dynamic, or that the low end sounds clearer and more coherent. Still others say it just sounds like it's moving more air. Our panel of listeners couldn't all agree on exactly what it did to the sound of our PA, except that there was a noticeable improvement, especially on the low-end.
At $149 per cord, the fifteen cords used on our church's PA would have added $2,235 to the cost of our system. For a well-funded church looking for audiophile sound quality, ESP's MusicCord Pro is something to consider. For the average church that's on the "good" or "better" section of the "good, better, best" continuum, you might find the $2,235 would go farther improving another portion of your system. Still, I must admit it'll be a sad day when our evaluation period is over and we have to send the ESP's MusicCord Pro power cords back to the manufacturer.
