Power Cables diminishing returns

08-05-13: Jafant
OP-

any/all cabling (power cords included) should reflect 10-20% of your system's cost.

MIT would argue that ;) I agree you Jafant....I have burned through a lot of dough trying cables....haven't tried them all but enough do draw my own conclusion. My opinion is there are a lot of great cable/designs in the sub to slightly over 1K range and after that you get into what seems to me to be the search for extreme resolution. I am more in the musicality camp and some of these flagship and near flagship cables just leave me cold....maybe you need an uber expensive system to enjoy...that I do not have.

Agree that the used price on the Audience Powerchord E is a great buy now that the SE is out.

The best diminishing return has stock power cable. It's usually included with component at no extra cost.

Suggest you buy used, if possible. Also, connectors make an enormous difference -- avoid brass and nickel. Duplex outlet makes a huge difference -- Oyaide R1 seems to be the best affordable outlet -- as usual, avoid brass and nickel. Chassis IEC inlet makes a huge difference -- avoid brass and nickel. Without good interfaces, you'll never hear the goodness of a good cable.

Lastly, plating changes the sound. Rhodium, silver, gold, platinum and palladium each have a sonic signature.

In double blind testing audio reviewers could not tell the difference between PC's that were $50 and those at 8K. Several such studies have been conducted --- all with the same results. This would suggest that the "perceived" differences that a cable owner hears is likely rationalization for paying what they paid (or some other psychological reason for the perceived differences). Perhaps there are "real" differences, albeit subtle, in certain systems with fairly unusual system synergies --- but in controlled settings, no one has been able to double-blind distinguish between PC's.

That said, interconnects and speaker cabling is indeed quite a different story --- there the differences can be fairly large. But power cords no. I talked recently to Frank Van Alstine on power cords and he laughed at the notion that people spend over $50-70 for a PC... said, from an engineering standpoint, that anything more is a waste of $.