Advice needed on power cables, wall warts, conditioning, electrical outlet

+1 go for the Cullen power cables.  There is a bit of a wait for them to be built, but worth the wait.

For good quality at a reasonable price look at Cullen or Audio Envy power cables.

@tuberist , +1. Even cheepo hospital grade outlets are better than stock.

As far as changing out power cables, start with Source components first and work your way down.- Advice from John Rutan (Audioconnection).

Bob

I would replace the wall outlet first with a hospital grade outlet because that will likely grip your electrical plug very tightly. The sequence I went was wall outlet then power cord from that outlet to my power conditioner

1. Make sure your electrical system is grounded well. Install additional grounding on your home... assuming you own a home. 
2. Think of power like water... dirty water.... 
3. Think of power cables like water filters.... pour in the dirty water, clean water comes out.
4. Good power supply, cables, etc. 'clean' the power.... lowers the 'noise floor'. Doesn't 'add' to anything.
5. Put a good quality power cable on your preamp... put in your best source music, listen at low volume and close your eyes. It feels like you are melting into the music. (I assume you have a system that is capable of this if you are considering spending several hundreds of dollars on power cables).
6. Disregard if you are a 'YouTube cable hater'.

This comes up so often I made a blog post about it:

i would first start with having dedicated outlets installed.....and then see if the power conditioner is really needed or not.   from there, you can experiment with power cords to see if they make a difference or not.

I would personally ditch the furman and use a BPIT, balanced power isolation transformer. Balanced power works via physics, CMR, common mode rejection. It’s not snake oil, it’s simple and proven.  Just use the right sized unit and allow for headroom peaks. My BPIT is rated for 10x the current draw I am using..  haven’t found anything more effective in lowering the noise floor.

bogbeat,

Can you describe the rest of your audio system?  If you have a very complicated setup, it may not be easy to hear differences in power cord, outlet, or power conditioner changes. 

Another way to test for good/bad AC power is with a high resolution video display.  Bad power can show up as visual noise/artifacts.

- Steve O.

Read:

I'd recommend you upgrade your AC wall outlet. There are a lot of good ones available on the market. I personally use the Furutech GTX-D Rhodium, if you don't want to spend that much the Porter-Port sold by Albert Porter on this website has a lot of bang for the buck.

Power cords for sure, whichever ones that are in your price range from:

MC!

Always appreciate your posts ... hey, what kind of cables are you using?  Have you found a particular conductor configuration better than another?  I'm preparing for a DIY project.  Thanks so much ....

Happy New Year!

Stock freebie black rubber power cords are so bad literally everything will be an improvement. Which one you do first hardly matters. For one thing it hardly matters because guess what? You can move it! PC are like everything else bought on the basis of how they sound. 

So give yourself some reasonable budget, and use that as a filter. No point reading up on $1500 power cords if your budget for all of them is $500. Be realistic. Realize price is no indication of quality. Your goal should be to look for the value leader at your price level, whatever that may be. 

Don't waste time with construction, and for sure don't waste time with "what is the best PC for my preamp/DAC/amp, etc". A power cord is a power cord, they review how they sound because they sound the same wherever. 

Cannot emphasize this enough, stock power cords are garbage. I did a demo one time, the guy didn't believe they could make any difference- until he heard the improvement so obviously he noticed while the record was still in the lead-in groove. Yeah. The instant the needle touched down. That freaking obvious.

So budget, read reviews, then buy.

Now, about those factory fuses....