power cables where do I start?

I won't claim that power cables cannot or do not make a difference, but i will say, based on a LOT of comparative listening with some very high end gear, that its a modest difference and not always an improvement over industrial stuff.  If they do, they must be filtering out power line hash, and that points to better solutions and bigger problems.

I didn't comment to start an argument--- rather, i am responding to your adjective "modest". If indeed your system is modest, and you are not a magician, then I am certain that you can spend your money more productively elsewhere.  Typically DACs and speakers have the biggest faults these days (or, the inverse, make the biggest improvement). Its the weak link in action - find the weakness and upgrade it. (note: my first professional designs were amps and preamps.... so I'm throwing stones at myself....)

One thing I've learned over the years is just how superb a system can be even with home depot wires. Since I design gear, i am constantly swapping in and out pieces that might explode or so something bad at any moment.  So i often have rigged wires and boxes in my system to add protection fuses (horrors!) using whatever i can find (lamp cord, 30 year old banana plugs..). And lo and behold, when i get everything else right, it disappears.

Just sayin

G

Try out my advice folks, it`s free

If wire directionality is an issue -and I think it is - then 50% of all stranded power cords are not constructed in the correct way, where directionality is controlled throughout the entire manufacturing process, such as Audioquest does with their cables and power cords (e.g., Hurricane). The 50% odds are assuming that all the tiny strands are actually going in the same direction, you know, directionality wise, which they may or may not be. They could be a hedge podge.

This means all the tiny wires used in constructing stranded power cords must be controlled for directionality as soon as they come off the large spool. That’s not as hard as it sounds, once you realize what’s going on. Ditto for DIY solid core power cords — directionality must be controlled when constructing them.

No stranded wire are close to be correct since stranded wires means distortion and (because of that) dynamic loss. This has nothing to do with directionality though.