Power Cables which take the soundstage back

Your right, it's Magic. They build most of those cables at Hogwarts.

How do better power cables "work"? They:

1. have better conductors than lamp cord (I.E. bigger gauge, fewer stands, better metal)

2. have better shielding and/or geometry that cancels RFI/EMI from getting into the wire itself

3. or, more importantly, have better geometry/shielding that prevents RFI/EMI from leaking out of the cord and interfering with your low level audio signals in your nearby interconnects or the fancy circuits inside your gear

4. have better connectors that grip IEC and AC plugs firmly and better alloys that more efficiently transfer current.

5. are fatter, with fancier wrappers that make their owners feel special.

To respond to some of the comments above that after market power cords are either a bunch of whoo-ie, or that at least beyond certain simple structural improvements have no real impact, I suggest that there is a lot of room for design improvements that can especially affect #3 above, and that this is the place where the greatest benefits accrue.

I hear differences in sound between $99, $250 and $800 cords. I agree that the incremental benefits decay exponentially with increasing cost, but some people are willing to pay for those differences whether it is with wire, electronics, speakers and room treatments. If you don't hear any difference between different power cables, then God bless you and all that money you are saving.

PS - I could not help but laugh out loud at Stewie's posts above.

Update. After 6 glasses of the 2006 Trotanoy Pomerol Kathy Bates looks like Gisele Bundchen.

Macdadtexas,
While I apreciate your and others right to an opinion, your assertion that so long as the power is "clean" or if a high quality AC conditioner is present, then little or no gain can be realized from high end (expensive) powercords down stream is false to my ears. This has NOT been my finding on occasions too numerious to mention. In fact I suspect that if I could plug my system directly into the local power plant it would sound better then it does today and if I used my power conditioner and power cords it would sound better still and in the exact same ways it does 10 miles from my local power plant.

As always, and I am sure NO ONE will disagree with this- listen for yourself and then decide. Anyone who tries to talk anyone out of simple listening tests, at home no less, has an agenda. This hobby is about listening to music and getting the most from our personal systems after all.

Shellie, it's funny you bring up a power plant, you see I'm not exactly ignorant of how those work seeing as how I have developed, in a group, greater than 15 power plants over the last 10yrs. That's about 7000 MW of power. That has given me access to a lot of brilliant electrical engineers, and they would tell you that your proximity to the plant would make no differnce since you would need a step down transformer anyway, so that doesn't make any sense.

I no longer work for the company that built them, and I am not an electrical engineer, but I have worked on the design, construction, of all aspects at this point, and I love to bring strings like this to the attention of my buddies who are transmission and power circuit design engineers, it gives them a tremendous amount of pleasure. Your latest post I am sure will be memorialized by them.

Once your power goes from the wall or the power conditioner, as long as the correct volume of electrons, flow into the transformer of the amp/preamp/source then the transformer powers up the remainder of the circuit, tell me again how the power cord affected that? If it is getting the power, enough power to the ciruit the transformer then takes over the power duties. The power transformer can and does affect sound, and the better the gear, usually the better the transformer and the rest of circuit. So if you think your super expensive cord sounds better than a moderate one, good for you. IT'S MAGIC. Did you buy it on Diagon Alley (semi-obscure Harry Potter reference).

Please, could we get a comment from a real electrical engineer here?

Also, I have done this listening test with some very expensive cables, and never heard any difference at all, and power amps used are MASSIVE power hogs, so that should have made a difference.

I usually respect other peoples opinion, unless you are screaming an opinion that makes no sense.

Tell yourself it's better, if it makes you feel better. Hey, I have some land I'd like you to look at too, really great price just for you