The Truth About Power Cords and there "Real" Price to Performance

Nelson Pass recommends the stock power cord that ships with his amps. Plain, simple, stock power cord.

I won’t argue with him.

Power cords matter, but they’re no magic potion. Best way to convince yourself of their worth isn’t to try out a superexpensive one, it’s to try out a really cheap and shoddy one. The falloff in SQ between it and the decently good cord you’re used to will show you  they make a difference. 

Everything you try, components, cables, room treatments, is going to be system or room dependent. Money doesn’t buy top performance. Top performance comes mainly from correct speaker placement and competent sound engineering. Cables can advance things a little, the  same way anything else can, but if you don’t have a lot of money to spend, you’re not missing much from pasing on Odins.

I am always wondering what my system’s’ weak link is. How can one know? That question is worth a thread in itself. If the weak link is your power cords, you’ll think that the mid priced cord you just tried, and that helped a lot, is wildly underpriced. If it isn’t your power cords, you’ll tell yourself the Odin you just tried out is wildly overpriced"

I use unshielded cables from a Lithuanian company (my entire loom). Mid priced. I am delighted with them, though they need some nursing along (de-mag them every second day, and never touch them or move them once you installed them). 

Last point — no point chasing high end, high cost power cord or a power conditioner unless you’ve already spent a couple of hundred dollars on a hospital grade receptacle (Wattgate or Furutech). You would be throwing your money away. Quality of the wall outlet matters huge.

Dodgealum is correct in saying that the entire price point is system dependent. The Denon reciever I have that was born in the early 90's would probably sound pretty bad with (in this case) $1500 interconnects because those cables would be unforgiving in their presentation & would point out every inferiority in my present system. So one can assume the same to be true with power cords, etc. So in my case, my $400 reciever, my $400 equalizer, my $600 CD player are connected by $250 interconnects through $400 speakers to give my ears exactly what they want to hear. I forgot, all powered by a $100 power conditioner 

@blumartini  please update about the friend in Hawaii and his generator.I'm really curious if that would provide clean power.

Power cables are relative to the power gulp required.