Help selecting a power cord.

Hello,
The budget is very important. I am going to tell you to get a Puritan PSM156 power conditioner. This is a great foundation to start. If you can demo this like I did you will know 100% you need this regardless of what your system has. As a cheat you can plug in an inexpensive power strip to add more outlets or get a two or three way splitter for each plug. This will make a huge change for your system with one product. It’s like building a house. You have to have a great foundation then you can build whatever you need on top of that. When you do go for power cords you will really be able to tell the difference between multiple power cords. They make a PSM1512 model that is 12 outlets instead of 6. My issue is it costs twice as much and you get one power cord included instead of two. Plus you can buy two PSM156 or save a few bucks and get the PSM136 which has a few less filters. A lot of people will tell you one brand is better than the other. It’s all what your system needs. You might go SG on you amp and Nordost on you preamp with a Straightwire on your streamer. It all matters. You will know the biggest change on your DAC and the preamp in details and changing the one on the amp is going to get you better bass control and separation of sound or notes. Get the gauge up to 12 on the amp. The rest you can go from 14 to 16 gauge. Some DAC streamers are really serious so you might need higher than 16 gauge. Straightwire Pro Thunder on the amp. Black Thunder on the Preamp. Nordost Blue Heaven on the rest. If the Straightwire Is out of the price range try the Nordost Red Dawn on the amp and preamp. If you are in the Chicagoland area this store let’s you demo cables to make sure it sounds awesome in your system. https://holmaudio.com/
I hope this helped. I have tested this out for myself and it all made a big difference to me. 

fastninja12

If I were you, I'd try Cullen, first. 

Cullen Cables are very affordable, bendable and offer a return policy.
Patrick is also very professional and cordial. 

Audio Art would also be an excellent choice. Be aware that their cables are fairly stiff, however. 

I just can’t believe a power cord can much or any improvement.  I would be curious if you could hear a difference with blind testing.

If you can’t instantly hear the difference in a blind test, then you shouldn’t buy it. Unless your system is at really high levels of performance and you are comparing expensive to very expensive power cords... it should be a no brainer. Most of us who have built great systems over many years remember their first digital cable, analog cable, and power cord upgrade moment... the moment we went “holy cow, how can a power cord make that much difference?”. If you don’t get that... just keep working on upgrading components.

Power conditioners are very dependent on your location not just on your system. In the UK we generally have good clean power and I live 4 houses away from a small electrical sub-station. Probably for this reason power conditioners make no improvement, and actually make the sound worse. In the US I believe that the quality of the power is poorer and many seem to get big improvements from conditioners. But it will still depend - rural locations vs city apartment blocks will have very different quality of electrical power. 

Re power cables - there are too many brands to know more than a handful but of the ones I have heard I can recommend Shunyata. The mid-series Alpha range by them are particularly good value.