Widget and I were having an interesting discussion of the merits of power cables and I told him that I could reduce electrical background noise by a few dB simply by rearranging the power cord to the surge protector. This is shown as the background electrical noise level on the Behringer RTA with a noise floor of -113 dB. Granted we are talking background electrical noise on the order of -100 dB and if you are sitting in a room at an ambient level of ~30 dBA, would you even be able to identify this change?

This month's Stereophile Magazine auditions the Naim preamp with a separate/or not power supply. The external power supply is shown to completly remove a/c power-related spuriae (sp?), but with the onboard power supply, these spuriae are down at -115 to -120dB. Yet, those performing the audition were able to tell there was a difference and overwhellingly preferred the remote power supply.

So what does this tell us???