But all kidding aside (not!), that is the audiophile lifestyle. In our opinion, one of the best ways to convert audio lead to musical gold is to bond the components with a consistent agent. And you guessed right: in our view that agent is a one-brand loom, be it interconnects or power cords. Here we had another opportunity to walk that talk. A full loom of 5 x Ansae Supreme, their best power cord, was coming our way. And these cables wouldn’t be completely new to us either.

We had the pleasure of visiting the Warsaw Audio Show in the fall a few times, with opportunity to stop at the Ansae room and meet proprietor Piotr. Though each visit was brief since we had committed ourselves to doing all the rooms of these really big shows, the Ansae room had something special about it. Crowded with equipment not the least of which were the signature Ansae power towers, the music here sounded great. Sourced from either a big Systemdeck Signature turntable or the following year a cool Akai GX 747 reel-to-reel deck, Piotr was about quality - and not just sound quality but also quality of free thinking.


How many times have you encountered a show collaboration between two cable makers? Ever? We have and it worked wonders too. At both occasions, Piotr’s Ansae brand handled what they do best: AC power. Cable manufacturer Albedo stuck to what they do best: interconnects. This represented unusual out-of-the-box thinking where each man got to show off his own trade to best effect. This applies also to the materials Ansae use, the Supreme power cord included. Piotr does not dig the treacherous trenches of his own metallurgy, having a wire run produced according to said personalized metallurgic recipe and thus being investing heavily upfront before ever constructing his Ansae cables. Instead, he sources his raw materials from the best manufacturers and lets them sweat the technicalities and large investment of specialized machinery, production processes and raw conductor stock. It’s with these outsourced materials that he gets to concentrate on assembling his final product.

Oxygen-free copper wire is stranded and insulated according to Ansae’s proprietary geometry and material choices. There are no filters of any kind. Termination is done with utmost precision to provide consistency from cable to cable. In the case of the Supreme under scrutiny, Ansae use the top-line Furutech FI-E50R and FI-50R plugs which are carbon bodied and Rhodium plated. Attention, Ansae offer cables only with Schuko connectors. UK or US types don’t apply as they don’t conform with Ansae’s quality standards. That’s commitment. With it, Piotr eliminates huge markets to offer the very best quality he can to a far smaller market defined by one plug type.


Because his exact geometry and constituent materials remain proprietary; and since we didn’t want to perform a cable autopsy; we must disappoint the curious readers. No tech details on conductors, braiding, dielectric and such. Here certain competitors just can’t stop bragging about all the complex always novel uses of materials and applications. Ansae keep quiet. They want the listener to focus on the results and not mentalize over the process of getting there. Being curious cats, we of course couldn’t help ourselves but do some recon. With the help of our trusty Fluke Voltalert meter, we saw that these power cords are very effectively shielded. Once connected between AC outlet and gear, the 1.6-meter cables didn’t trip the Voltalert light anywhere along their lengths. Some cords in our inventory are equally shielded yet they do ‘leak’ at the plugs even with expensive Oyaide. As an aside, here we’ll mention STS Digital’s Fritz With who offers a countermeasure to leaky power connectors by way of grounded copper sleeves. We received our loaners each in their own beige cotton sleeve adorned with the company logo. Piotr advises to remove the sleeves before use (in the Warsaw show pictures you will see a few cables still sleeved). In that same advisory he warns not to bend the cables too sharply even though they are very flexible. As a bonus and a unique one at that, he mentioned that all cables were fully run in already. We like all customers would receive our cables ready to use, bypassing any cumbersome burn-in time and sonic inconsistencies along the way.


With all this Apple-esque Think Different vibe of our Polish cable guys, we wanted to know a little more about the man behind the brand and his peregrinations through Audioland. This type of intel was easier to squeeze out than any tech details so here goes: "My long journey with power cables started 15 years ago. As a true audiophile, I put a lot of attention on speaker and line-level cables but my electronic background and voice of reason didn't let me accept that power accessories can make a real difference. Until I heard how important they can be, I was absolutely convinced that cables which don’t transfer audio signal couldn’t possible influence sound quality at all. When it became clear that I had to revisit my strongly held convictions, I started to look for available power cables in the Polish high-end market. Once I got them connected to my audio gear, the improvement was radical. Even so, I still wanted to prove to myself that I could do far better on my own."