I’m not sure I agree that a better power cord is a poor idea for less expensive electronics.
The right cord should - at the very least - lower the noise floor, so you hear less electronic interference when playing music, resulting in a clearer sound. Now, if a "euphonic" sound is what someone wants, that’s fine. After all, it’s your system. But, even with my older NAD integrated, they sounded better with a better power cord.
There’s a caveat here, though. If you are not listening to well-recorded music - which typically is classical and jazz and a few other genres, you won’t get all the benefits. I was listening to my system with a top of the line Shunyata cable, and what I heard first was the improvement in the bass, when I played a disco cut I played in clubs years ago. Having heard this record since 1978, I know how it sounded on earlier iterations of the system. Aside from the bass (on this particular record), I didn’t hear the rest of the sound to improve in any noticeable way. Since it’s a record i doubt they put much effort into recording, I wasn’t expecting much from it. And that’s what I got. Improved bass, but the vocals were no clearer than they were before. This is down to one thing: your choice in music.
I’ve had other CDS or vinyl that sounded better with a better cord (and I used several levels of the company whose power cords I buy: Shunyata), but I know that it’s a hit-or-miss proposition if the music is typical of the way most music is recorded (doubling up the main vocalist’s voice, or 85 microphones used) - things that have nothing to do with music. What IS encouraging is that more recently recorded music seems to be tilting towards better recording, which is always a good thing.
I can’t imagine a good cord making the musical presentation worse. I CAN imagine hearing the recording as it really is, and then being disappointed because it ’sounded better with a cheap cord.’ But again, the deciding factor there is the music one plays. Electra Records from the 1980s will never sound as if they have any bass, because Electra was famous for ’no bass’ on their records in the ’80s (the ’70s were quite different). Their entire recording process was horrible in that decade: glassy-sounding music with no depth. And a good cord might reveal more of that "this-is-how-it-actually-sounds" effect, but then, that’s the record (and I don’t imagine streaming or CDs will improve the sound quality).
So, a really good power cord will show you what something sounds like - or at least, uncover the poorer recorded aspects of a record, but do you want that? Me, I play all kinds of music and am sometimes surprised by how good a recording I haven’t played in years, sounds. I also find that vinyl reveals this more than CDs (I don’t stream much at all), so it also depends on what your medium of choice is.
That said, a well-engineered power cord will lift the system’s sound quality upwards. I’ve never heard one that makes the system sound worse, unless you count banishing the euphonic effects a bad thing.
