Kharma + ASR. Two wrongs together don't make a right. But there's a larger point to be made: A review of something I haven't heard *can* give me a clue of what to take a chance on, particularly if I can find reviews of other components I *have* heard, by the same writer. Then I can triangulate how much credibility to assign the new review based on what we agreed or disagreed on in the past. But a review of something I *have* heard isn't persuasive or actionable to me in the least, if we reached different conclusions. So save it -- anyone can find a favorable review for *anything*.
Do power cords make a difference? Well, yes, in that they tend to bring their own sound. But if an amplifier needs a specific power cord to sound musically-convincing, and without it it doesn't, then said power cord should be supplied with the amp if it is so elemental to the performance of the circuit. "Dude, you didn't have the right power cord..." doesn't cut it. I'm pretty sure even ASR wouldn't endorse that proposition.
Somebody mentioned silver. Silver's advantage is simply in being the superior conductor, granting it wideband transparency. If silver doesn't sound good it's because there is a problem present upstream that silver isn't hiding. Dielectrics, wire weaves, etc. have their effects and can overwhelm the role of silver vs. copper vs. palladium, etc. But silver doesn't add detail or dynamics that aren't there in the first place. Other conductors may subtract some, which can be a good thing if something upstream of the speaker cable -- whether the amp, the source or the recording itself -- either contributes some hash or isspatially, tonally or harmonically incorrect. Silver's advantage is to simply reveal more. If silver and ASR don't work well together, the fault is with ASR, not silver by itself. It's not that silver is not good enough for the gear; it's that the gear or recording isn't good enough for silver, as has often been the case with digital.
Every power cord, speaker cable and interconnect introduces distinctive sonic character. Ideally we try to minimize this reality. A lot of people use these cable elements for sound-shaping, effectively rendering them fixed-parametric tone controls. Do what you want. My choice (and recommendation) is to assemble musically-convincing high-resolution gear that sounds proper in the aggregate on any reasonable cabling, and then optimize further with a neutral wire loom (which generally isn't correlated to cost).
Phil
