REVIEW

Carbon tonearms were installed during the test period, with Hana ML and Miyajima Takumi L cartridges. Power cables are from Furutech, Pink Faun, and ASR. With the exception of one of the Pink Faun power cables – feeding the phono stage PSU – none of them are particularly expensive cables or of very elaborate construction. All of this, plus a CD playback arrangement, has been moved from my former apartment in Rotterdam, where I had installed a separate mains spur, ending in a permanently installed DIY power distributor with star earthing and Pink Faun wiring - to my partner´s apartment in Stuttgart where none of this is present. Since the move, a basic Rittal distribution block with a captive Belden lead provided the power connections to most of my equipment.

Later on, a Pink Faun 2.16 Ultra music server joined the fray, and the Mainz 8 C3 was relegated to providing power to the server using a Pink Faun Ultra Power Cord (3,750 euro for a 2 metres long cable) that was supplied with it, my older Audio Note DAC 3.1X NL Signature D/A converter (further modified by the people behind Pink Faun) and the line level preamp. Similarly, in another configuration the Ansuz was tried in front of a rebuilt Gryphon Orestes 4-box phono stage, in a system that comprised of Avantgarde XA pre and power amps and the new Avantgarde Duo G3 speakers, both in semi-active and fully active iTron mode.

Let´s start with what the Mainz 8 C3 doesn´t do. It doesn´t magically make hiss and hum in a system (of which I have a fair amount since the move) disappear. It doesn´t seem to block any DC present in the mains, so a transformer that hums in sympathy (the acid test is to determine whether the hum comes from the speakers, or the transformer itself) is still going to hum; the same with components that are simply placed too close to one another (another unfortunate consequence of moving house).

What it does do is dramatically lower the noise floor within the music being played. This is particularly noticeable in a system like mine where passive crossover filters, feedback loops in amplifiers et cetera have been consistently eliminated with simple circuitry comprising high-quality components in the signal path. The soundstage becomes wider, deeper, and much clearer. Avantgardes are not the easiest speakers to make ´disappear´ because of their physical stature with those 27” diameter midrange horns, particularly in a smaller room, but with the Ansuz providing the juice for the front end and amplifiers this feat was largely achieved. There was more fine detail to be savoured especially in the higher registers, but in a smooth, relaxed, self-effacing way. The perceived tonal balance of the system remained unaffected, as was the capability of the large horns, supported by two pairs of 12-inch woofers and 1,000 Watts of DSP-controlled low-frequency amplification per channel, to provide firecracker dynamics and lightning speed when called upon to do so. With all amplifiers fed through the C3, the overall effect was that of more refinement overall, letting the system get on with it in an easy, unforced, and natural way without giving the impression that the sound had been ´sanitized´ by any means. When used with the analogue front end in the system and running the new Duos G3 in a rather larger room, the effect was similar but to a lesser extent; it was much the same with the digital front end consisting of the Pink Faun music server and Audio Note DAC. It has to be noted that both the Gryphon Orestes phono stage and the Pink Faun 2.16 Ultra feature very elaborately designed power supplies, to the extent that Pink Faun recommends plugging the unit directly into a mains outlet without any power conditioners or filters.

Conclusion

In my personal system, the Ansuz Mainz8 C3 made the best out of a suboptimal situation by providing the equipment´s power supplies with a virtually noise and resonance-free mains output (keep in mind that when electrically amplifying a music signal, you are not ´amplifying´ the source signal from thin air but modulating the voltage supplied by the mains with it). To that end, it´s bristling with innovative technologies that dramatically lower the noise floor without actually filtering the mains supply in the conventional sense, which means dynamics remain unaffected. For best results, you will probably still want a separate mains spur for your audio equipment if at all possible, and to keep switched mode power supplies (like the ´wallwarts´ used for turntable motors etc.) from being in the same electrical network as the audio equipment, but even without any of these, the Mainz8 C3 provided a significant improvement in terms of stereo depth, width, and separation, overall clarity and detail and did this in such a way that you could virtually sense the system ´relaxing´, being to a large extent freed from ´grain´ and ´hash´ from the lower