hospital grade or commercial grade receptacles ?

Contrary to the respondent a couple posts above, power cords and receptacles do make a difference. If you can, I would chase down on A'gon some of the "Porter Ports" that member Albert Porter was kind enough to make available. I have one and it did make a difference. Reasonably priced too.

Good luck,

If power receptacles make a difference (and I doubt it) you would be better off using ones designed for high current high voltage applications, like you stove or clothes dryer. These have contacts with much greater contact area, and some have a twist-to-lock feature that provides a wiping action for the contacts.

Another pointless battle between those who hear differences and those who don't- which has to depend, I have come to believe, not on differences of hearing but on the resolution and nature of the equipment used. In my case, Wattgates and FIM outlets sound different from one another in easily described ways, and better than stock, by far. No competition, no subtle differences, night and day stuff. In my experience, too, although not with outlets, I don't like the sound of cryo'd components: they tend, consistently, to sound more forward, with less air around images, than stock versions of the same. It's a matter of taste.

Check out PS Audio outlets, they are the best I have seen.

To those that say outlets (or power cords, or plugs) have a sonic signature... how do you believe this happens? You have many, many feet of 12-14ga Romex (or equivalent) in your house. Some of you have aluminum wires. Then you assume that the termination of all of that simple, cheap wiring at the outlet, as compared to a different termination (that can be shown to have inconsequential resistance), has a sonic signature? This is akin to astrology. I have no doubt that some people believe they hear differences, but the far and away most likely scenario is that there are no differences between outlets (that function properly within their specs), no sonic differences attributable to cryogenics, and that same reasoning can be extended to power cords with reasonable gauges for the loads involved. The difference you think you hear isn't real. It's in your head and nowhere else.

Even if you assume, just for the point of argument, that there is a difference in sonics that could happen between outlets, how would that difference survive the voltage step-down of the component's power transformer? Or the rectification to DC? Or the capacitors? Before all of those electrons hit any sort of active circuitry?

Doesn't this seem unreasonable? Did all of you sleep during high school physics? I'm assuming there's no one arguing here that even vaguely understands electrical engineering...