Best Power Cord

I just want to reiterate Avguy's advice. Don't accept anyone's recommendation of a single cord without trying some others.

I keep a decent quantity of four different brands of power cables around, simply because they all sound different (not necessarily better or worse) from each other.

To give you an example - I was helping a friend put a system together and we had a Res Audio CD50 driving a Plinius 8200P driving Thiel 1.5 speakers. With this combination, power cord (let's call it A) sounded much better than cord B, and we wondered why anyone would ever buy cord B since it sounded so bad compared with A.

Once the system ran in we decided the stage size and weight were not quite what we wanted so we inserted a Plinius CD-LAD into the system and it took off (ie we heard it, and it was good). But the sound was not quite balanced so we tried a few things and eventually ended up using power cord B, and wondered why anyone would buy cord A since B sounded so much better.

Mark: Just wondering if you ever did any experimenting with the OTA wire as a power cord? I've been using a DIY OTA power cord on my CD player (can't really imagine anyone using such a thing with amps as described in the OTA thread) with very good results for the past few months. I don't have any experience with the megabuck cords, but the OTA replaced a pretty decent cord (IMO) that retails around the $350 mark.

The points made by AVGuy and RedKiwi are well taken. As a general rule, I never buy anything for my system without listening to it first in my system. Nonetheless, these forums are excellent places to get starting points for items to audition and a good complement to magazine reviews.

To that end, I just completed my audition of the new Shunyata Python and I am sad to report that it did not work well in my system. There was a distinct loss in soundstage and overall the sound was muffled with both my Wadia 850 and Pass X-150. To my ear, I liked the sound of the S/R A/C Master Coupler better and it is about a fifth of the price. Given my success with other X-Series S/R products, I think I will audition the new S/R Res. Ref. (X Series) power cord.