Ansuz Mainz X Power Cord - Quick Review

Last month, a friend of mine came to me with this power cord made by Ansuz Acoustics. We did listen it almost one hour on my class A power amplifier.  I know this time is not enough to fully understand the performance of this cable, any cable indeed, so this is the quick review.

Well I did not know much about Ansuz's products. Because it is a relatively new brand, at least for me, but I heard some good things about Raidho which is the speaker brand name of same company. Last summer I had a chance to listen Raidho D1.1 in a demo room also. I could not fall in love with those little monitors but they had good mid transparency and powerful tweeters producing good sound stage.

Ansuz Mainz X Power Cord

Seems that Ansuz made this entry level power cord using four identical "solid core" conductors. About solid cores I'm not hundred percent sure but they should be because of its stiffness and sound characteristic. Each wire also had solid insulator covered by braided shield (probably silver plated copper). In summary, we had four, individually shielded, solid conductors design.. At this point let me give one more guess again; one for phase, one for neutral and two for grounding.. If I were do it, I would design it in this way.

How does it sound ?

Apparently Ansuz made this power cord to uncover the performance of Raidho speakers.  This is my opinion of course.  Mainz X's mid range which was very lively to my ears, made my Kimber Pk10 a bit dull here. Highs were good also. In my experience, clear mids and highs are the main characteristics of solid core cables but on the other hand they usually have some drawbacks in mid/bass range. I heard similar results with almost all solid designs that I tried in the past. Mainz X was not much different but unlike others, it was playing more lively in mid range. I think that this is a a nice bonus for such a shielded cable. I'm not a big fan of shielded designs especially on high current equipments like power amplifiers because of dynamic issues and coloration. After countless tries I had settled down to Kimber's unshielded power solutions which make wonderfully dynamic and natural result. Between mid & bass range Pk10 was clearly better than Mainz X.  Pk10 was not just more powerful, was also more articulate, more punchy and more natural. 

At the end of my quick review, I did not find Mainz X suitable for me "on my power amplifier" but some small sized full-range owners may love it on the same position.