Affordable Power Cords

There have been several threads about this topic, there are numerous suggestions. Others may disagree, but my experience has shown that quality connectors are really important, at least as important as the wire. This means that you aren't going to get much for $50-100 (retail for a preassembled cord) that is going to sound like a real upgrade. If you are willing to spend a bit more and spend a little time on a DIY cable, you can get a REAL bang for your buck. Cryo-Parts ACIII cable, Parts Connexion's DH Labs cable, and the Tunami are all good bulk DIY ac cables that you can turn into fine cords with Marinco or Furutech connectors. DIYCable.com has lots of parts and instructions. If you have no interest in DIY, occasionally some DIY cables are sold here made from good wire and parts and are a good value (as long as they are correctly assembled!) Another good value are Shunyata cords that have the inection molded plugs (Diamondback and Venom.) Galen Carol Audio sells the Venom for $89.00. That's the one I'd be most willing to try (preassembled) at your price point.

Oscar44, your testing results aren't surprising. I've read many times of people that didn't receive any but marginal (or no) improvements from a particular power cord. Lesser PS Audio cords have often been mentioned in this regard. My experiments with DIY VenHaus "Flavor" cords were similar, only marginal improvements. The Cryo-Parts and Virtual Dynamic cords I've got were instantly producing very audible improvements in my system. Don't worry about double blind tests to validate your impressions. I doubt any power cord produces uniformly repeatable effects in a wide variety of systems. I'm a rational person by nature, but I also accept that there are things which contribute to improved sound which we don't understand fully. If you bought a half dozen of a particular cord that is universally praised for producing improvements, it's quite possible you'd not receive uniform improvements in all your components. I've heard far more variation in performance of power cords at given price point than has been the case with interconnects. Power conditioning is another example of similar product interactions. I and many others have used a given power conditioner and praised it's contributions to our systems while an equal number have found the same condioner to be lacking.

Please let us know your impressions and results Oscar44. It's always interesting to hear of results in different systems.