Most Beneficial Cable Upgrade

You might also want to consider installing dedicated circuits to your system where the ground is isolated. A qualified electrician can do this for you at a fairly reasonable cost. At greater cost you can put in full-on wall system that covers your entire panel, like this one from Equi=tech. Isolating your system's power from the noise generated by devices that share the circuits in the rest of your house could render significant benefits. All of this stuff really will depend on how resolving your system is in the first place, and how much it makes sense to invest in it.

As far as power cords...I agree, try it yourself and see if it works for you. If not you too can join the crusade and pepper the forums with self-righteous pleas to all the victims who are bled dry by the criminals selling cables. If you like the difference they make you can alternatively endure threads like this, some of which aren't far from a discussion on abortion or the existence of god. Or, perhaps you can just enjoy whatever works for you.

Gsself,
I do not know the answer, I have never compared power cables. My goal is two fold:

1) Determine if I can detect the difference between stock cables and expensive high end cables. I have an excellent high end audio system, but have never bothered to upgrade my power cables. I plan to test some high end cables very soon. I doubt I will detect a significant improvement. If I do, I will buy them. I will have the answer to this question soon, and I will report back (as mentioned previously).

2) What is the consensus among high end audio owners who have made the effort to do an objective evaluation of high end power cables through blind testing. I suspect we (high end audio consumers)are being manipulated by cable manufacturers and audiomagazine reviewers. The reviews on this subject are a joke. They are not objective, and I find that annoying. We can easily do our own objective test here on audiogon. As I said, I think the test will prove that the average high end consumer cannot consistently tell one cable from the other in blind listening tests. If enough members participate it will either prove me right or wrong. Either way, I don't care, I just want the answer.

If you use passive preamp them preamp to amp cable is more critical than CD-p to preamp. Low resistance and short cable is advisable in this case.

Matjet: "Either way, I don't care, I just want the answer."

A consensus simply doesn't matter. What does matter is whether YOU can hear improvements in back-and-forth replacements. Find a dealer who will loan you PCs or at least offer a satisfaction gaurantee and try them. Even after all this 'dialog', it's YOUR system and they're YOUR ears.
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I would volunteer the following principles

(a) all engineering is a compromise ( I can do this for $10K but with $20K more I could reduce distortion another 0.001%)
(b) specs only measure the state of our knowledge, not what we are capable of hearing

This discussion is interesting to me because its the direction I need to go next. Being physics trained, when dealing with unknown equations, one tries to start with the most important variables first (1st order), establish the parameters, then move on to the next subtler variables (2nd order) establish those and so on.

All electrical equipment depends on power which makes it a first order variable... any imperfection in power will feed instability in all attached equipment. And you can easily demonstrate the interaction between devices attached to power in your own home.... flip on a heater or vacumm cleaner and you will see lights on the same circuit react during the initial power surge. And thats just what you can see, not the complexity induced by flourescent lights, refrigerators, air conditioners, and hair dryers.

So I believe it sound judgement to start first with a high quality power filter/voltage clamp. Interconnects on the other hand have differences but those differences become a complex hard to predict interplay connecting two dissimiliar electonic devices.. they can change the sound but how is as hard to predict as finding a comfortable shoe.

I find little merit in the discussion about power cords. I suspect the actual issue here is the end interface... loose connectivity or poor choice of metal contact at plug and equipment end. You could probably do better taking a stock copper cable at a home supply store and soldering a high quality temination at both ends. The power cord has the simplest task of all... feed 60hz at 120 volts with no capactive or inductive interference to a transformer. A power cord that addresses this at around $50 is a convenience factor but spending more on a passive device I find hard to justify.