Why not?

That’s one way to end the debate on fancy aftermarket power cords. Let’s bring back electronics with captive power cords 🤣

Clearly, tongue in cheek doesn't always come across on the interwebs.

 

I hate to make assumptions too, so I don’t @lalitk , but I will say you seem to have a talent for being abrasive even when you say you don’t mean to. Being lazy or cheap are not the only reasons someone might be dismayed at the state of the cable market. Allow me to explain how I see it with a story.

Suppose your doctor tells you you need a pacemaker. Once you’ve accepted that fact she asks if you want the standard connecting cable or the premium one. She says, "I’m obliged to tell you that there is no measurable difference between the two and no data one is better than the other and the premium one costs 100 times what the standard one does. By the way it’s not covered by insurance but a lot of people like to get the premium one."

The difference is that medicine is part of science, and there are standards like double blind tests, the AMA, CDC, FDA, etc that regulate that they are “doing no harm”… just like the old Greek Hippocrates advocated.

The “It feels good” branch of homeopathics, and aeroma therapy, etc. may work, or may not… but there is little evidence that it does, and is viewed as “witch doctor medicine” from a western perspective…

And hence we do not have aftermarket cables on pacemakers, nor aftermarket power cords nor batteries.

That gear has to work as intended, and there is no room for the subjective experience to be considered worthwhile when defibrillating.

It objectively becomes pretty clear whether a defibrillator works or not.

 

Would you feel that is an acceptable state of affairs? I would not, but I bet many if not most people and maybe me too would end up buying the premium cable. That’s how I feel about the hifi cable business these days. So I’m seeking ways to try and change that.

I am looking forwards to what you come up with.

I kind of like your pacemaker analogy.
(I have a soft spot in my heart for it 😍)

Why all the back and forth?  Just try some better power cords — either buy used and sell at little/no loss or buy direct from the many direct sellers and take advantage of their generous trial/return policies — and if they don’t make a significant improvement stick with the generic PCs and live happily ever after.  What I can’t accept is when people just reject out of hand PCs can make a difference and never even try better cables yet preach that better PCs can’t make a difference because there are no measurements to support it.  That’s just willful ignorance, and as @ghdprentice as a scientist has stated and while he might not fully understand why PCs make a significant difference, in reality they do in his experience for whatever reason.

Bottom line — not everything is measurable relative to what the human ear can hear.  So for those of you who follow the dogma that PCs shouldn’t make a difference, you’ve got no excuse as it’s free, or very near free, to try several brands and use your ears to see if they make a difference.  If they don’t, then fine you’re right where you started from with some good personal experience to support your beliefs.  If you haven’t yet tried better PCs, what are you afraid of — that your preconceived world might be upset and you can’t explain why?  Who cares?  If you get better sound you win whether you can explain it in measurements or not.  Sheesh. 

 

Why all the back and forth? Just try some better power cords — either buy used and sell at little/no loss or buy direct from the many direct sellers and take advantage of their generous trial/return policies — and if they don’t make a significant improvement stick with the generic PCs and live happily ever after. What I can’t accept is when people just reject out of hand PCs can make a difference and never even try better cables yet preach that better PCs can’t make a difference because there are no measurements to support it. That’s just willful ignorance, and as @ghdprentice as a scientist has stated and while he might not fully understand why PCs make a significant difference, in reality they do in his experience for whatever reason.

As a scientist I can understand that if one shows something happening on a DC supply then I know that the cord changed things.

And I also understand that people generally have a psychological bias to expect a change.

 

Bottom line — not everything is measurable relative to what the human ear can hear.

That seems like it is a bit of a magical way of thinking.

1. The people that design the electronics are more often thick glasses wearing types that understand the science.
2. The power cable people are more along the social sciences tract, that understand human nature and prose.

I would be looking for the best of group #1, before I looked for group #2.
Going for group #2, sort of implies that one should have been considering the group #1, but decided not to.

Secondly; the onus should not be upon the rational to prove that other are not hearing voices, it is upon those that hear the things to provide some evidence or reasoning that their stories have a basis is reality.

 

So for those of you who follow the dogma that PCs shouldn’t make a difference, you’ve got no excuse as it’s free, or very near free, to try several brands and use your ears to see if they make a difference. If they don’t, then fine you’re right where you started from with some good personal experience to support your beliefs. If you haven’t yet tried better PCs, what are you afraid of — that your preconceived world might be upset and you can’t explain why? Who cares? If you get better sound you win whether you can explain it in measurements or not. Sheesh.

Another approach is that It is entirely possible that some gear does enjoy a change from a power cord swap. (But probably the gear that I would not be looking at.)

Most of the quality gear is designed well, and putting specials cords on sub standard gear is sort like putting lipstick, or spats, onto a pig. (It does make for a better looking and more handsome pig.)

It is usually pretty easy to call the distributor or manufacturer to ask them.

This is sort of exactly as @bruce19 asked at the end of his post:

Mostly I would like to know if I am wrong and there are some examples of manufacturers who either include, offer or recommend specific power, interconnect and speaker cable for their products. Thanks community members for offering a place to ask this question that keeps gnawing at me.

Here you go @bruce19:
For the example of Nagra, their agent agrees with @soix and others.
(But they also basically said to consider the 12V battery ahead of a power cord.)

I would be asking @atmasphere, Suprateck, AR, Purifi etc. if they recommend a different power cord or not… and why? And if it has been tested?

 

Here is exactly what the local Swiss agent told me:

If running constantly off the mains power I would say yes, upgrading a power cord would make a difference sonically.

If going the battery option, I wouldn’t worry too much about power cables as once your in battery mode - the interconnects would make a larger difference here

I’;ll admit that ^This^ came a surprise to me… Their MPS (power supply) is not cheap. And it sounds pretty nice.

 

I’ll probably get a spare Lemo connector made, and try and quantify the voltage stability.
Then if I try a power cord, I could run the 12V through a power divider and digitise it with an ADC and have some objective data.

Even at the top of the high end, products are built to hit certain price points, with certain parts and pieces decisions made accordingly. The car tire analogy is an accurate one - good enough to last the buyer a fair amount of time but not the best one available. Secondly, not every manufacturer spends time testing after market tweaks with their products. Some do but many are already busy enough just keeping their products available, especially given today's product pipeline shortages.