The thaw. As it turned out, I survived this Ice Age just fine. Global warming is real. Just as I'd heard in Aalborg, first with a budget system of Primare CDP+integrated and €1'000 pair of QR1 Audiovector stand-mounts, the motto was space is the place. The primary difference which this Ansuz power loom introduced over our residential status quo had to do with soundstaging. Everything got bigger and more specific. If you value sonic holography as that walk-in-and-touch panorama that's explicitly sorted whilst spreading wall to wall without any blind or dull spots, you'll love to really really hate the Ansuz Mainz8 foundation. That's for its inexplicably steep expense. But in the next breath, you'll hate to be without its very concrete love. That—in all seriousness, no joke—includes sounding/behaving louder. Think more robust, substantial and dense without touching the volume knob. Definitely think more dynamic cresting for bigger waves.

But first and foremost, the key attraction, the core benefit and the most demonstrable 'aha' action of this power distributor and its delivery agents of power cords was the expansion and more locked-down image localization of and within the virtual stage. A prime demonstrator of many a Raidho and now Børresen show demo was/will be Yello's "Race" track, here in its extended mix. Like all of this Swiss stuff, it's expertly studio-massaged artifice to be as visually suggestive and direct as possible.

It's easy to imagine burnt rubber, noxious exhaust fumes and tap the gnarly machismo and braggadocio of lads at the strip. The scene-crossing motor cars should traverse the largest possible r/l distance before disappearing in the distance. With Ansuz, they certainly did. The spectacular elements of eye-less vision had revved up.

20 years of doing audio have me convinced. Of all our cable types—perhaps phono excepted which I have no experience with—power cords make the most difference. Beyond a certain level, I'd not pursue costlier "better" interconnects or speaker leashes. Sonic payback just becomes far too small. That's if it's anything more than a sideways move to begin with. Power delivery differs. This first trial was sufficient to think that to recreate the Aalborg experience, I'd not look at different speakers or electronics. I'd not look at signal cables. I'd look at the Ansuz power solutions. Swapping in these review loaners revived memories of my Denmark visit. What they'd done different to our resident installs had all been about soundstaging. It's not something I value as highly as the crew around Lars Kristensen. My hot buttons are elsewhere. But I certainly notice when aspects of soundstaging change. One could pull oneself further up this same Danish sound mast by duplicating their electronics and speakers but to my ears, the main ingredient, the boss and facilitator, has to be their different concept of power delivery.

Higher current delivery? Lower system noise floor? Superior grounding? Your guess would be as good as mine. But it's likely that the equation does revolve around these three factors. How would our downstairs rig keep up?