The comment from specialist mains cable doubters is usually…why bother with dedicated specialist mains cables when the cable coming from the grid is a normal piece of copper wire!
Well the above is true, once the electricity reaches your house and ultimately your wall mounted mains socket it has under-gone fundamental changes from where it began, see our website article for a better understanding of the UK mains supply
Unless you have a dedicated mains spur for you hi-fi or have re-wired your house with double sockets for the hi-fi or home cinema then you will be forced to use a so called “mains extension block” of some sort. Pick one up in B&Q for £2.99 at your peril. Almost all of these have thin internal strips made from brass and pop riveted together and most have a red light on to show they are working. This will be generating radio frequency interference (RFI) and worse still if the block has an on/off switch even more interference is generated.
With specialist blocks available for between £30 and £300 classed as suitable for hi-fi and home cinema, lacking the on/off switches and glowing lights, some even treated with various forms of plating and chemicals to clean the contacts material. Many are wired with RFI reducing cables to help combat the mains noise and pollution that is injected into the mains system from house-hold appliances, mobile phones, wireless internet etc, etc.
As well as being bulky (12 way is the most I have found commercially available and the block is nearly 3 feet long) these blocks attract dust and never seem to lay or position themselves in the right place behind the equipment rack, the spaghetti of cables will all act as aerials to pick up radio waves and result in a robbery of timing and rhythm to the music.
One solution that is rapidly gaining in popularity is the hydra lead. The heart of the hydra is a 4 way multi-way mains plug.
The multi plug consists of a single mains plug with internal pins able to accept up to 4 separate mains leads, all wired into a substantial plug pin so no thin brass contact strips to contend with. As each wire is connected within 10 millimetres of the next you get the nearest thing to perfect star earthing short of cramming all the wires into one plug.
This set up is recommended by Naim Audio hence the phrase “Naim Hydra”. The space taken up by this arrangement is far less, there are still cables present behind your rack but they can be adjusted when the multi-plug is wired in, at Mains-Cables-R-Us we have made and supplied numerous Hydra Leads and terminate each of the 4 cables with the customers own cable length requirements and special terminations (IEC or Fig.8 normally). Most other Hydras for sale have a fixed length of cable attached which can be up to 3 metres for each one, that gives an aerial 12 metres long to pick up stray radio waves!
We make Hydra Mains Power Cable Sets to order starting from £60.00 with basic cabling and up to £300+ with silver plated cabling and connectors for the ultimate hydra mains set.
