Moved Audio Quest cable to my DAC. WOW

 Mcintosh doesn’t believe in power cables of quality for some reason.

McIntosh are designed by engineers. They have test gear. They don't have to 'believe'.

If someone could point me to a measured difference between amplifier power cables at the speaker, I'd be eternally appreciative.

My very 1st power cable experience a month ago is the same as yours. Plugged it into the amp first.... "okay". Plugged it into the dac simply because I was curious. WOW.

I’ve switched back and forth with the only 1 upgraded power cable that I’ve got, and always it sounded much better on the DAC. Here’s the strange thing tho, with the dac it was all improvements, so it made a huge difference.

With the amp, well.... hmm how should I describe this. Imagine putting a 500 HP engine into a 1990 Lexus. It felt like "fix your other priorities before you join the big league". It felt like the amp was having an effortless time separating the sound and magnifying the sound, But the sound had grains and digital glare, So I was hearing more of what I didn't wanna hear. 

If you PM me, I’ll let you know how it goes when I receive my 2nd power cord that is going permanently into the amp, ETA 2 weeks.

amureyex

The power cable in you amp is certainly worthwhile. The only issue is it is likely showing up deficiencies you previously weren't aware of. Hopefully a second cable to you DAC will help. Otherwise, you are probably well and truly on the upgrade junket. 
 

Hi Sam,

Thanks for your comment and I'm glad you also found this effect.  I Audio Quest cable made zero difference on my MC452 or my Parasound JC5.

Based on someone's comments,  I moved it to my D90SE. I'm doing the power supply upgrade to my node2i and that will allow me to try a better cable there. 

I might purchase a second Audio Quest power cable and move it to other equipment like my preamp.  

I thought I was done tweaking now that the pandemic is over but that initial power cord move showed that there was still more left on the table. 

Not the first time I read/hear about lower end AQ cables making a positive difference on DACs. But not on the amp. 
Finny. The higher end AQ such as Tornado and Hurricane always performed better on the amp in my system. I’ve not tried the lower end cables though.