Power Cords Snake Oil ??

Power cables capable of conducting sufficient electrical energy (current and voltage) to your equipment make absolutely zero difference to the sound when all other variables are kept the same. The $1000 power cable will not fix any issues inherent in your electrical feed nor will it be capable of conducting more electricity than your amplifier (or other component) needs or was designed to work with. The "audiophile" power cable is a straight fraud and ANY claims to the contrary are based on the placebo effect or someone is trying to fool you or someone else. 

Put another way, it is physically impossible for a power cable that is adequately constructed and tested to to work to make any sonic differences in your high fidelity system. And if you think - or actually do - hear an "improvement" then something is very wrong with your setup or with your brain/ears. 

Thank you for the information. But if I can hear the difference between cheap power cords and very expensive ones does that mean I have Asperger’s?

No. Not necessarily. It means you’re experiencing the placebo effect. Aspergers (or any other ailment/condition) are still possible, but there is no causative or correlative relationship between that and the fact that you are hearing what you want to hear - and - that you wouldn’t hear or be able to point out more than 50% of the time in a true double blind A/B comparison test.

I should clarify my first post, however, to say that "very wrong" is only in cases where the placebo effect has been ruled out. 

Here is another way to look at it. Say you have a high end 100WPC Class A/B amp. It should have shipped with a cable that its manufacturer deems acceptable to enable top performance in all possible configurations for which the amp was designed.

Say this amp maker also manufactures $1000 power cables and $5000 power conditioners.  

Wouldn't that raise a couple of questions? 

1) Would they in good conscience sell me the $1000 power cable knowing that I bought the amp from them and that it came with the power cord they provided? IF so, what would the intended benefit be - electrically speaking? Have they measured for differences on the DC-side of the amp's PS and if so, why don't they  publish them? We all know that a high quality power cable can't clean up dirty power....

2) Then what about their $5000 conditioners? Let's say that I have a situation where my power is so dirty/noisy/out of phase that I need one of these conditioners. So now I have their amp and their conditioner, meaning I have a cord they provided and clean, phase aligned AC power on the AC side of the amp's power supply. Have they measured different DC voltages/currents on the DC side of that amp's PS during use? Why not publish or provide these results in an easy to see graph or description? 

3) If the company's goal is to ensure that I'm "as close to the music as possible" and they believe that their amplifier needs a conditioner and extra heavy duty expensive power cord, why don't they just sell the whole setup the way they think it sounds best, or why don't they just design their amp's power supply to condition or filter the AC power so that the DC power is "better"? 

The whole thing is nonsensical. This is a ploy to extract as much money from you as they can without providing any scientific proof that their system is 1) superior to a standard power cord and isolation transformer/filter or 2) that the added cost and components have measurable differences in audio quality? How many of them would be willing to set up a double blind A/B test or tests (plural) where different power conditions are present? 

ostensible_constituency
No. Not necessarily. It means you’re experiencing the placebo effect. Aspergers (or any other ailment/condition) are still possible, but there is no causative or correlative relationship between that and the fact that you are hearing what you want to hear - and - that you wouldn’t hear or be able to point out more than 50% of the time in a true double blind A/B comparison test.

I should clarify my first post, however, to say that "very wrong" is only in cases where the placebo effect has been ruled out.

>>>>It doesn’t make sense that placebo effect can be used as the reason why power cords sound different. Same with the claim that blind tests would prove there are no differences. If either of those claims were true then anyone could automatically win any audio argument by claiming placebo effect or threatening the dreaded blind test. I hereby declare both of those arguments logical fallacies.