Power Cords Snake Oil ??

Interesting to see the 4 day breather we all took. 2003 took some getting over for me, too....
Corona, you even hyperbolized my words back on 12/21 too!
My "statement" Prelude and Fugue PCs take 2+ hrs to build, using all-Teflon insulations and a highly-refined antiresonant, high-density, nonmagnetic, heat-sinking "bath". Blah, blah, blah. Of course the core conductors are "OEM". Do you think ANYBODY making audiophile PCs casts and extrudes their own copper/silver wire? Do you? I use the best materials available; after 2+ hrs assembly (trying to match my Subaru-mechanic nomen's $60/hr labor rate) I've got about a $160-170 CGS ea in these, and will sell direct at $160-185! Delete minor marketing expenses, tools, and especially customer service time consulting/marketing I'm probably making about $10/hr on my $39 and $55 PC Kits, and maybe could make $20-30/hr if I'm lucky on these Prelude & Fugue ones. Helluva great business model, eh? Crump and other folks have suggested that my prices have to be much higher to make a go of it. I know this already; consequently my activity sits at the hobbyist/DIY and myth-busting high-value level. Nevertheless, I contend that there's no earthly reason why high-performance PCs need cost more than $250. We can be sure that if our tiny market was considered attractive there'd be mass-produced ultra-low dielectric-involvement, anti-rez PCs coming out of China for under $100 by now.
Many of us hear differences with varying PCs depending upon specific system criteria, as listed by other posters. Fine.
If this weren't true I wouldn't be involved either, believe me. But I contend that exotically-priced, usually- concommitantly-gushingly-unexplainable performance aspects of individual PCs are accidentally consequent to our roulette of system matching and idiosyncratic placement. And what does "better" mean? Many of my A'gon customers and buddies have resold their expensive PCs after installing mine. Others (fortunately a minority) claim that spending more results in
differences (aka "improvements") they value. So be it. By varying quantity and types of conductors and insulations, geometry and resonant behaviour one can "tune" these snakes.
This is already quite a mature, "old-hat" culture for true
audio-bandwidth cabling for use with mic, interconnect and speaker applications. To claim unexplainably-extraordinary performance for a relatively simpler 60Hz AC application across the board (most or all power supplies) smarts of snake-oil marketing in a quasi-virgin submarket. Many of you have expressed this already, and more cogently than I have....
Being a pianist, and having just set up a decent home-recording adjunct to my beloved Steinway B, I have to admit that subtle microphone placement was FAR more critical to obtaining great recordings than subtle changes in cabling.
The (Michael) Grace Class A mic preamp runs off its own wall-wart, and very inexpensive, yet universally-accepted Canare starquad mic cables link the Earthworks omnis....
Years ago I struggled with speaker-placement and sidewalls-treatment to arrive at proper room "loading".... Both these exercises further confirm to me that acoustic/electric transducer performance is still the overwhelming aspect that "leverages" excellent performance. Yes, I'm astounded by the music-making of my EMC-1, the Aleph P and monos, the SPM transparency and speed, and even the improved coherence and spatial holography provided by my inexpensive PCs, but I try not to get lost in these RELATIVELY minor details....
I've designed a few speaker systems, so understand the basics of passive crossovers, drivers' Thiele-Small, box-loading, radiatiioon patterns, etc. I find it almost preposterous that a single-driver dynamic loudspeaker performs significantly better only with a specific power cord linking its amplifier. I suppose the claim is based upon the purity of a crossoverless (capacitorless) design.
Yet MANY multi-driver loudspeakers use a natural acoustic rolloff of their midrange driver, and some without a high-pass either, thus running "naked" up top as well. The VA Parsifal Encores share this design, with resultant crosses at wide 150/5500Hz points. believe me, they sound extraordinarily good with my Alephs pushing them with nelson Pass' original $8 14AWG PCs, and somewhat better with my PCs. To state that a loudspeaker won't perform to design level without a specific PC is in my mind insulting to all those who've sweated countless hours designing and voicing excellent transducers. In a related vein, would B&K et al specify a SPECIFIC PC to provide phantom power to their $4000 microphones? Methinks not, and I doubt they worry much about performance compromises either. Happy and Healthier New Years to all. Ern

1) The most relevant thing I can say about power cords, I suppose, is that my wife and I can hear differences in double blind tests, but the interconnects must all be up to snuff and all the cords plugged in correctly vis-a-vis their polarity orientation.
2) The only light I can shed on why "string theory" matters to cable design is, to summarize string theory.
String theory is a theory for a unified description of the fundamental particles and four fundamental forces in nature, which includes gravity. Now, I think, that since it would relate how the two nuclear forces, and the metallurgy/chemistry of a cord effects its electrical properties and how they, themselves, are effected by its vibration, i.e. the cord's gravitational responses (environmental and otherwise), a cable designer could, in theory--if he now knew all the mathematics, etc. of the different forces' interactions--finally design a cord which is wholly without "guesswork", and close to perfection.
This suggests particle physicists make good cable designers, I suppose.
It further suggests that its many of today's "white papers" that are the snake oil, (but not the cords, they work) because any "white paper" actually accounting for these quantum-level type "mechanisms" which operate in cables and cords would be so technically scientific us non-physicists wouldn't fullly understand it.
Does this mean we shouldn't believe what we can understand?
Why not? We believe in what we can't. It's called faith.
Happy New Year.

Albert: Maybe Corona will take you up on the audition offer, but I already stated previously that I am not interested, as a rule, in checking out products which IMO are marketed using specious claims. And oh, yeah, my system's alright I guess, but I don't know that even one at the exalted level of your own is up to testing whatever it is that S23chang is talking about (and I play the guitar... ;^)

Actually Chang, if you want to extend String Theory to guitar playing, there's an example of what we might call "Cord Theory": Albert Collins, the great, late Texas blues stringslinger, always got a distinctly unique guitar tone that no one else gets. I've read many items speculating as to why this was so, ranging from his idiosyncratic unconventional-open-tuning-plus-capo instrument set-up, to his Telecaster-fitted-with-Gibson-humbuckers axe, to his pick-less thumb-and-forefinger pluck-slap right-hand technique, and all of this undoubtedly does have something to do with his personalized tone. But some time after I saw him in concert at DC's famed (but now-history) Cellar Door in about '82, I realized what his real secret was. He used a custom-made, 100ft. long cord so that he could perform his trademark walk-out-of-the-club-and-keep-right-on-playing-out-in-the-street showmanship routine, which he began doing way back in the day years before cordless radio instrument/amp-connection systems were available. But he kept on using that cord even after they were, and used it in the studio too. One day after seeing that show, I happened to be playing somewhere away from my usual rig and had to plug in using something like a 30ft. cord, the longest normally sold. Lo and behold, I heard a faint trace of Albert's trademark tonality coming through - it was presumably the cord's extra capacitance vs. the common 10ft. or 15ft. cords at work.

Anyway, as I understand it (meaning in no way technically), "String Theory" is a grand, entirely mathematical, theoretical physics construct designed to possibly provide a 'unifying' framework for connecting the four more-or-less-observable fundamental types of force at work in the universe, namely gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, and strong nuclear force. I think the math is supposed to work out to imply that matter-energy actually consists of infinitesimally tiny elemental units of existence described as being 'strings' which manifest as the various types of more-or-less-observable members of the 'particle zoo' through their different 'resonant' states, and which constitute the 'fabric' of space-time within 12 or so 'looped' dimensions. And this math, if correct, is supposed to apply in all instances and conditions right back to the moment of the Big Bang, unlike the equations of Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Bohr, etc. Or something like that. The theory may never be confirmable through scientifically testable means. But regardless of whether or not these 'strings' actually exist, they (as of now) have nothing directly observable/dectectable to do with our everyday world of guitar strings, power chords, or power cords.

Zaikesman, are you saying we audiophiles are being strung along? :^)

If so, perhaps a better name for Corona’s new cords would be “Silly String.” I’m about half serious, it would disarm most people with a laugh and maybe drop their defenses long enough to give them a listen.

Albert: That's why you are a better audiophile than I. :-)