Fplanner, your experience or experiments may have led you to your particular conclusions. Mine have led elsewhere.
My conclusion about power cords (and I'm sticking to it) is that it's all about power transfer -- the higher and faster the better. I have discovered that certain shielding configurations (when shielding is even used) may yield subtle variations with some front end stuff (especially CDP, CDT, and DACs) but my conclusion is otherwise the same.
Power transfer, of course, is affected by many factors in addition to wire size, but that's still the biggest single parameter IMO.
My conclusion about power cords (and I'm sticking to it) is that it's all about power transfer -- the higher and faster the better. I have discovered that certain shielding configurations (when shielding is even used) may yield subtle variations with some front end stuff (especially CDP, CDT, and DACs) but my conclusion is otherwise the same.
Power transfer, of course, is affected by many factors in addition to wire size, but that's still the biggest single parameter IMO.