After Market Power Cables - Gold or Snake Oil?

I'm trying to understand. If the expensive cords DON'T help, it's becuse I can't hear, or my equipment is too lousy to be improved by a cord, and of course the answer to that one is that I need to buy more expensive equipment so I can then purchase more expensive power cords and then I will hear the difference. I think it's all been said in this thread. Everything is system dependent, so something expensive purchased may not be an improvement. This of course lets the seller off the hook completely. It just didn't work in my system. What to do? Go get some more cords. Certainly something should work. If anyone should know what the proper power cord is for a give piece of equipment is, it's the manufacturer. Are they cheating us with crappy cords? If not, then why can't they give us something that we won't have to change right away. Or at the very least, they would know what the ultimate upgrade would be, thus saving us a lot of time and money. If this stuff was cheap I'd have no complaint, but we're talking very expensive electronics. I think that the Emperor is stark naked.

If 18 gauge cable floats your boat then use it. As for me, I admit to other motives beyond demonstrable sonic return. I want minimum 12 gauge shielded power cord and good strong connections to hospital grade outlets. It is just basic good grooming.

Elmuncy, SOME manufacturers go to the trouble of buying nice 2x14AWG Chinese or domestic 5' cables for about $8. Yet the rubber or PVC-insulated wires in these costs about six cents per foot! Said manufacturers need to multiply their raw goods costs to make a profit.
A great "high end" wire like Belden 83802 costs $1.55/ft in 1000' spools, or about TWENTY-FIVE times as much! A manufacturer simply will not spend that kind of money on a power cord. Yet you can make yourself a mighty nice PC for very little investment if you wire it yourself. As a convenience I assemble all the components (and instructions...NO SOLDERING required) for a DIY 5' PC Kit for only $33 + $7 shipping. Sorry to plug here, but you probably WILL hear a difference with good clean 12AWG copper sitting in nothing but pure Teflon, surrounded by a full, braided-shield. Quietness, detail, and dynamics all improve. If you can't hear it then yes your system is simply NOT a highly resolving one, and thus not capable of high-performance musical reproduction. But that doesn't mean you can't dance or sing along. That's what automobiles are for, eh? Cheers.

For the record, I've made power cords for most of my components out of Carol industrial cord, 12 gauge, with hospital grade connectors on each end. That makes sense to me and it's as far as I'm willing to go.

Nothing WRONG with that, but clean copper in pure Teflon WILL almost always sounds better, and it's quite cheap. Maybe someday you'll open your mind to it. Happy holidays.