Do powercords make a difference in sound?

Foster_9 and Jedinite24,
Good points. I have tried the "newer" Volex's that came with some amps I bought. They do not sound like my older brass bladed ones. The newer ones are a little skinnier (still 14/3 though) and have a nickel plated plug. Nickel seems to hurt the sound to me. I lopped off the end and replaced it with a $5 Home Depot Pass & Seymour brass one. Moved it toward the the old ones sound. I still think the newer one is okay, especially for a street price of $5-7.

Seeing as the can has been emptied and we have worms crawling all over the place :-), how about shielded vs unshielded cords? It "could" make a difference in "some" systems. That's about an hour past vague but could be dead ball on accurate.

08-15-11: Lissnr
There are 2 widely disparate "camps" about whether power cords can make a noticeable change in the sound of your system (assuming adequate gauges/capacity for the accompanying component) ....

I would submit that there is a third camp, to which I happen to belong. That camp believes as follows:

1)There are sonic differences between power cords, for reasons that are technically explainable (e.g., shielding, resistance, perhaps inductance), and probably for reasons that are not technically explainable.

2)The differences reflect interactions between power cord characteristics, the characteristics of the particular incoming AC, and the particular components in the particular system, especially their power supplies.

3)There is no reason to expect much if any consistency of those interactions from system to system, and therefore no reason to expect much if any consistency or predictability of the sonic effects of a particular power cord.

4)While a power cord may have effects on the tonality of any given system, it is incorrect to attribute tonal characteristics to a power cord, because those tonal effects will vary from system to system.

5)Given a reasonably good system, the ability of a system to resolve musical detail, and its ability to resolve differences between power cords, are two different things. Which may sometimes, in fact, have an inverse relationship. An ideal power supply, were it to exist, would have no sensitivity to the quality of the incoming AC, and would send no rfi or other spurii back into the power cord, from where it could couple into other parts of the system.

6)Given the foregoing, there is no reason to expect a high degree of correlation between power cord performance and power cord price.

Regards,
-- Al

Pass the popcorn.

Talk to you after about 30 more posts.

Have fun.

Al, as usual, incredible analysis.

Al - I learn from your posts a lot. They bring necessary sanity especially to subjects like power cords.