Uncovered. The distributor's guts mount to a metal base whose 90° bend becomes the outlet back. That assembly seats inside the HDF top/side cover, making this a hybrid materials affair. Each socket wires to a screw header which connects to a wide circuit trace in the narrow but long green PCB. The noise-attenuating bits float on the double-decker board, the anti-aerial resonance coils hide inside black shrink right behind the power inlet. That's how the tech verbiage translates.

Here comes a closer look at some square Tesla coils and the 3rd-gen dither parts.

Finally a closer look at the push-on connectors of the outlets, the screw headers preceding them and the power distribution PCB traces gathering at the star ground center. Time to put the lid back on; and sans tiny black screw which had rattled inside upon delivery.

The very robust X2 AC cords are thicker than typical generics yet bend easily enough with a reasonable turn radius. Just so they're sufficiently resilient to stay in the shape we bend them into. It's probable that they contain at least some solid-core wires. It'd explain this metal 'memory'.

And that's all he said before installing these goods in a system or two to lend a few good ears. Cue Total Recall for the guy with three of 'em? System N°1 saw a SublimeAcoustic active xover, Denafrips Terminator Plus DAC and Crayon CFA-1.2 amp plug into the Mainz 8 X-TC3. System N°2 focused on amps by way of 250-watt Kinki Studio EX-B7 monos on the mains, a Goldmund Job 225 on the subwoofer. Either way my 4m Ansuz loaner cord made the key connection to the wall outlet. Upstairs that replaced my usual LessLoss from Kaunas, downstairs a Titan Audio Labs from Belfast.

Upstairs the difference to my usual costlier power-delivery mix of vintage Crystal cords and €1'200/4-outlet passive Furutech was mild. The Dansk interlopers aced equivalent contrast ratio as that giveaway friction or pop of images over/against silence. This was obvious on the far-flung title track of Vangelis Katsoulis' eponymous Pictures from inside whose meandering e-bass soloes above crisscrossing percussive flares and groove accents. Here's another track from the album. Particularly in its second half it too sports lots of little embedded splashes which intensify their location suchness when resolution improves. That always requires a low noise floor. Though my virtual investment into the Ansuz power loom saved significant scratch yet doubled in outlets over what it replaced, I couldn't say that the sound suffered any. On that score and in my book, the company's most budget-friendly stuff already spelled 'all you need'.

Decisively this didn't soften PRaT or transient incisiveness. For my tastes the super-relaxed LessLoss distributor had done so in my setup when it oversold smoothness, flow and limpidness. By the opposite token, neither did this Ansuz set overemphasize the rhythmic dynamic jumpy attributes which, in toto, the AGD house sound has a tendency to do. I suspect that 'slumming' it at the bottom of the Ansuz totem pole actually rewards people who don't want more adrenaline. Cranking up dynamic twitch was one of the telltale changes I heard during my factory visit whenever their team upgraded any component or tweak to its next level then level beyond. Think racier as in track. For listeners who rate tonal weight and textural elegance more than prickling pressurization at top acceleration, this X2 balance could in fact be ideal. Leave the dragstrip to the rubber-burning lads.

Use mouse-over for enlarger function; or right-click to open image in new window at full size.