Power Cords Snake Oil ??

IMHO & in my limited experience, I found that MOST powercords on the market is pure, unadulterated Snake Oil!! This has been confirmed to me by various audiophile friends many of whom use inexpensive Chris VenHaus Flavour X power cords after having tried several other expensive power cords.
I know that my pre (especially) & my power amp are sensitive to power cords. Searching for a power cord that has no sonic signature of its own within a reasonable price has been a tough assignment for me. I cannot afford an Elrod or an Electraglide or a BMI or any such $1000+ power cord! I'm presently using the ESP Essence cord & I find that it doesn't degrade the sonics of my pre & power. This I can tell you confidently. Is it "improving" the sound? No it isn't! I feel that it has practically zero sonic signature of its own.
Any time I hear or read that a power improves the sound, I'm leary of the claim. I believe that power cords cannot improve the sound; they can only change the tone i.e. colour the sound. All those believing that power cords improve the sound are listening to some form of distortion or the other that they perceive as "improvement". During the novelty period, it sounds diff. from what they are used to & it is mistakenly perceived as an improvement. Extended & critical listening reveals the flaws in the power cord & you see it for sale on Audiogon!
Electronics & Electricity will always be based on Physics (aleast on this planet!) & so equipment in these 2 realms will always have to honour these physics laws. Any improvements will have to be measureable. I'm convinced that if it's not measureable then one hasn't made any improvements or lateral changes or one doesn't know how to measure.
The money you can spend to lay dedicated lines to your wall outlets & to clean up the electricity coming to your mains from the grid will go far, far more than any power cord can. A power cord cannot fix what is broken (i.e. cruddy electric power) because it is a passive device. If you have a problem with your power, fix it at the source - that big breaker box located in your garage/basement.
If the power is clean, an inexpensive DIY power cable (VenHaus or Jon Risch type) should do just fine.
In audio, 95% of the stuff is TOTAL trash! Shifting thru this c*** takes a life time!
IMHO. YMMV.

To the people opposed to not making measurements:-

You are fooling yourselves if you are thinking that mankind has very understanding of electricity! In fact, we have a very vast understanding of this subject - more than you can imagine. I'm quite sure that you do not have much visibilty to this fact. Some of the best minds of Planet Earth have worked & are working on the subject of electricity & electronics. It's just that these people are not/do not want to be employed in the audio manuf &/or retail business. The manuf., retail & user community is as good as the people that comprise it. We do have a lot of kick-butt people in this field but there seems to be a very large mass of un-educated people. In my experience I have observed that the more educated the person is in this audio hobby/obsession field the simplier their systems are - they spend more money on this things that make a real diff such as dedicated circuits to their setup, clean power supply & even battery supply if possible, their electronics is rarely the highly advertised hi-end brands rather it is some esoteric make where the designer concentrated on making gear dedicated to the accurate repro of sound, their connections between systems are simple using un-hyped interconnects & power cords & I see them talk more about music software, the emotional impact of their repro sound on them.
I'm convinced that this does not come from running from pillar to post trying every power cord under the Sun! I think "Slappy" said it correctly right in the beginning of this thread - you can't crawl thru a 20 or 200 foot tunnel of cr** & then appear in a tuxedo expecting us to believe that you are clean! The final presentation might be appealing, but you are still covered!
Power off the grid to most homes in the USA is seriously flawed in that it bears a lot of noise that would ruin the impact that any hi-end stereo should have on its user. If that user will not fix this problem at the source i.e. fix the power source & will rather fall into the trap of using various hyped power cords as a solution has a SERIOUS issue with problem solving 101! I shudder to think what criteria this person uses to select his/her electronics!!
Some of the people here are convinced of this line of reasoning thru their experience or from logical thinking of problem solving. Others will learn but the hard way by spending their hard earned $ on hype & having their skeptism turn in cynicism & still others will never learn!! As they say, it takes all sorts.....
Do not get me wrong - I'm not against power cords! I'm against power cords that are hyped to us users which have no technical merit of solving the cruddy electricity problem. Any manuf or retailer who suggests buying his/her power cord without ensuring that the user's power supply is clean enough to take advantage of the power cord is leading the user astray. This will lead to more & more cyncism from us users & will kill our hobby gradually.

Agree with Eldartford - engineers & competent (& even some incompetent) designers fully understand the minute workings of power amps! The electronics, electricity & electro-magnetic concepts that are needed to design an amp are what I would consider basic in all 3 fields. YOU might not understand these concepts thoroughly for very good reasons & you might be extrapolating your lack of knowledge onto mankind! There is very little hi-tech in a power amp as it uses a lot of high power devices, the operation of which is very well understood. That's why ss power amps last a lifetime! Rowland's Model 201 use a new switching power supply module. It's new for audio but in use elsewhere (space exploaration, for eg.) for a long, long time. That type of power supply module is also very well understood! In fact improvements in power amps comes mostly from leaps in metalurgy (better hook-up wires, passive components, etc).