But back to Garth Powell and AudioQuest: at first was reluctant to move from Furman in northern California down to AudioQuest in the southern part of the state. During the time that Bill Low, put the project on hold. Only after Garth Powell's decision in favour of Audioquest and the move did the topic of power technology regain high priority with the cable specialists. Since joining AudioQuest, Garth Powell has brought three power conditioners and several power cables to production readiness: above all, he wanted his solutions to work in all systems. In my experience to date, measures to improve the power supply were more or less effective depending on the system they were used in, or local grid conditions. Garth Powell himself will explain the technical details of his equipment in the second part of this article. Therefore, I will limit myself to a short technical description of the Niagaras and the cables and focus on the practical experiences with them.

Let's start with the NRG-Z3 cable: even in this relatively inexpensive model, the conductors consist of AudioQuest's Perfect Surface Copper and silver-plated drain wires, via which interference picked up by the shielding is conducted to ground. The patented "Ground Noise Dissipation System" protects the conductors from high-frequency interference. It consists of several interleaved layers of synthetic carbon, which largely convert the radiated energy into heat. The running direction of the current conductors and the shield is important and, are determined by the asymmetrical surface structure created during the production process. This surface structure effects the impedance of the conductor, it is fractionally higher in one direction. This can be used effectively to help drain away high-frequency RF/EMI noise that is picked up by the system. In this way, high-frequency interference is kept away from the equipment. In addition, common mode interference is also linearly filtered out by the use of a “Common Mode Phase Cancelling” array. Here, identical conductors are paired, but critically, based on the surface structure, they are laid in opposite directions. The idea is that they both pick up identical high frequency noise but as they are arranged in opposing directions they phase cancel each other. The final part of the story is that all of the cables are only connected at the source, and half at the load, so that residual noise is sent back to the electrical earth.

Beim Thunder bestehen die Leiter dann aus Long Grain Copper, also Kupfer mit langer Struktur. Die Oberfläche ist hier natürlich ebenfalls so behandelt, dass sie Audioquest Anforderungen für Perfect Surface Copper entspricht. Beim Thunder werden die stromführenden Leiter und die Erde getrennt geführt und geschirmt. Die drei Adern werden dann miteinander verflochten. Bei der Erde kommt selbstverständlich wieder das patentierte „Ground Noise Dissipation System‟ zum Einsatz. Das Dialectric-Bias-System oder kurz DBS sorgt mit seinen 72 Volt für ein stabiles dielektrisches Feld und soll so eine gleichmäßiger gefilterte Rauschableitung garantieren. Für noch bessere klangliche Ergebnisse steht das Tornado bereit, das sich vom Thunder vor allem durch einen 34-prozentigen Anteil von hochreinem Kupfer – laut Audioquest-Terminologie: Perfect Surface Copper+ – unterscheidet. Thunder und Tornado werden in Versionen für konstante Stromverbraucher und solche mit hohem Leistungsbedarf angeboten: Source und High Current.