Power Cable ~ $300 - Which to get? Nordost, Audioquest, Furutech, Shunyata, Zavfino?

I have an inquiring mind. Which is why I tried making a few myself. Then I met a guy, lifelong audiophile, whole basement with a great big work bench devoted to tweaking and building interconnects, power cords, speaker cable. Thirty years building, studying, reverse-engineering, you name it he's done it. 

One day he calls me up all excited, he has his Grail, wants to bring it over and show me how good it is. Well I guess it did sound pretty good in his system with all his DIY cables. At my place though he looked like his dog died. Even he had to admit his Grail wire sounded awful. 

But wait. It gets worse. 

I pulled some $75 interconnect at random from out of my old cable clutter drawer. It was head and shoulders better than anything he ever built.

Not that he really ever stood a chance. Some guy trying to save some money. Gonna make something better than, or even as good as, or heck even halfway close to being as good as the guy who has devoted pretty much his whole life AND come up with something people will pay their hard earned money for?

Never did make any sense. Go ahead and believe if you want. If you do though I highly recommend you not ever compare what you made to anything other than the patch cords the manufacturers throw in for free. 

There is no such thing as a good DIY power cord. Kit or otherwise. Cryo or otherwise. There just isn’t. Period.

Look, this does not need to be so hard. You get a Master Coupler. You try it out. You get a few others. You try them out. At some point, which will vary depending on how good you are and how quickly you learn, it will become evident there simply is nothing anywhere near the price that can touch it.

soix nailed it:

You just simply can’t go wrong buying an excellent $2k cable for around 300 bucks.

Synergistic Research Master Coupler. Hands down. One and done. Not that I would ever recommend buying anything like this without comparing several contenders, preferably in your own system. 

But look. SR has been making this same power cord for over 20 years. In all that time one would think it would have been superseded or faded to obscurity. But no. Instead they are still out there selling at higher prices than originally and commanding good prices even in the used market. Like it or not, it is the gold standard of power cords. Nothing endures like that for no reason.

I notice you mention OCC. Sorry, but who cares? Someone who hasn't been around long enough to see that for the marketing BS it is. None of that malarkey matters in the least. All that matters is how it sounds. Get a Master Coupler and find out.