Chord Epic Power Cable

Read The Chord Company's specification for Epic Power and notice what is missing from it. There is no conductor gauge, no headline current figure, no exotic metallurgy. Four construction lines are published, and three of them are about damping and shielding: PVC internal and external insulation with a high mechanical damping factor, a dual-layer braid and foil combination shield effective at high frequencies, and a high-density vibration-damping outer jacket. Only the first line is about the conductors themselves — high-purity multi-strand copper, arranged using Chord's ARAY technology.

That distribution of effort is a quiet admission of what a mains lead in a listening room actually is. It is not improving your electricity. It is a shielded object lying on the floor of a room full of interconnects, sharing a distribution block with three or four other components that each dump switching noise back onto the mains, and it is mechanically coupled to the rack at one end and the wall at the other. Chord have specified it accordingly.

Choosing the connectors — read this before ordering

Epic Power is available with high-specification 10 amp or 16 amp IEC connectors, or with Fig8 for two-pin inlets. Fig8 is the one people forget: it is fitted to a great many streamers, DACs and small source components, it is a completely different shape from a standard IEC, and there is no adapter worth using. The 16 amp inlet, which appears on a number of larger power amplifiers, is likewise not a thing a 10 amp cable will fit. If you are not certain which of the three is on your equipment, a photograph of the back panel settles it in about ten seconds.

At the wall end, Chord offer UK, Euro, Switzerland, US and Australian mains connectors. Standard lengths are 1m, 1.5m, 2m and 3m, with custom lengths and terminations available to order.

Technical Specifications

Who Is It For?

Systems that have already had the obvious work done. If the interconnects are still the ones that came in the box, or the loudspeakers are sitting where the furniture happened to allow, those are better places for the money and we will say so. Epic Power makes sense in a system where the signal path has been thought about and the remaining question is what the components are plugged into.

Where to fit it first, if you are buying one rather than several, is a genuine argument rather than a settled matter. The case for the source or the preamplifier is that noise picked up early gets amplified along with the music. The case for the power amplifier is that it draws by far the most current and sits closest to the loudspeakers. Tell us what the system is and you will get an opinion rather than a shrug. Below this sit the Chord Shawline Power Mains Cable and the Chord Clearway Power; above it, the Chord Sarum T Power Cable. If the distribution block itself is the weak point rather than the lead, the Chord PowerHaus P6 addresses that instead. Everything else is on our Chord Company collection page.

Buying from Martins Hi-Fi

A mains cable is the change most worth judging at home, in your own supply, with your own neighbours' dimmer switches and chargers doing whatever they do to your ring main. Our home evaluation service covers it. Listen for the noise floor rather than for a tonal shift: a quieter background behind a voice, reverb tails running a little longer before they disappear into nothing.

When you get in touch, you'll be speaking with Dave, Chris and Tim at info@martinshifi.co.uk, call 01603 627010, or WhatsApp on 07554 687137. You can read more about how we work on our Why Martins page. We are at 85–91 Ber Street, Norwich, NR1 3EY.