Power Cord for Power Conditioner

I just took my BMI Hammerhead MK5 power cord over to a friends house and without him knowing I swapped his Analysis Plus power oval with my BMI on his amp. I had his wife take him out of the room for a minute and told her I had a surprise for him. When he came back into the room he asked what was going on. I didn't say a thing and hit play on his cdp. He just sat there and listened to a song that he has heard a million times and just laughed and said what are you doing? He didn't notice a thing until the middle of the song and then it hit him. Back up vocals kicked in and he said ok what just happened here? Is this a different cd? Is this a high rez cd or something? Then his wife spoke up and said ok what did you do to the stereo system it sounds a lot better. I reached under the couch and pulled his old power cord out and held it up and said I just swapped a power cord out. My friend got up and played the song again and was amazed with the differences. He said I did not notice at first because I really was not paying attention for a couple of minutes and then I realized I had heard something in the song that I had not heard before or it was masked. I then had his wife take him out of the room again and when he came back in I hit play and he said it sounds the same. why is that? I said I didn't do anything but made you believe I was going to and you noticed zero change. This experience has made him a bigger believer in power cords and there ability to change the musical enjoyment. The biggest change came when we were able to swap out his cord on the cdp. However, I don't think his wife is going to let him buy another power cord for a while. In the end I was the bad guy.

Lacee: I think perhaps that it would be more correct to say that it is beyond the realm of science available to the audio industry. Keep in mind that science costs money. If you have a couple million bucks and a climate controlled facility (few million more) you can measure several hundred channels of information down to the pico/femto level at many gigahertz. Problem is that this costs more than the small/medium guys can afford and the big players like Sony dont want to spend the money for such a limited use. Now that said these test machine vendors only spec the gauge of power cord (large, to handle 480 3-phase -most of them that is) and not the vendor or characteristics. Implies that either the cord does not matter or that the power systems are designed to make the cord not matter. The latter would explain much of the hear vs. not hear argument. Personally I'm open. I thought speaker cables were bunk until I tried one with a good recording. I thought usb cables were bunk until I got to try several on a really good system. Now I'm gonna keep my mouth shut because I dont know as much as I thought!

Paulsax - not only that science to measure does not exist but also that current science cannot be trusted. Amplifier, for instance, that has the best specifications most likely will sound the worst.

To answer the OP's question, I thought the same thing but in two instances using power cords from the same company as the power conditioner actually sounded worse than a cord from a diff manufacturer. I think there are other variables involved

In skimming the detailed arguments about power cords, I have not noticed anyone addressing the issue of the quality of the power line behind the electrical outlet. One might spend hundreds on a nifty power cable, but its merits may be moot if the AC feed in the wall is insufficient or degraded.

Having re-wired several photo studios and my own 99-year-old house, I can comfortably warn you folks that you MAY be wasting money on a limp piece of 6-foot cable, when you should be putting your dough into upgrading the line from the service panel to your listening area. I am not denying that some people can hear differences in cables: I'm simply suggesting there might be other ways to upgrade before you jump into wasting money on power cables.

For starters, upgrading the service panel itself may improve things. Beyond that, we are all at the mercy of our local power companies who control the size and quality of lines between the ultimate source - which might by miles away - and our buildings.

Numerous things can degrade the quality and integrity of power between the service panel and the listening room outlet: cable age, cable size, length of cable run, cable kinks, additional loads between the service panel and your listening room (anything with motors, such as wine coolers and dehumidifiers play havoc), proximity to aberrant and spurious radio frequency signals, even the quality of connectors within junction boxes and the grade of the outlet itself.

I've not even addressed the problem of hum-induced polarity amongst various components - but that's for another forum.

Only after you have looked into these issues and eliminated possible causes of power degradation should you begin to consider putting 10% of your equipment budget into a stupid power cable! Once you fix any problems mentioned, you might find a generic power cable works just fine, so long as its rating matches that of your conditioner and equipment.