Power cable from wall socket to power strip

A lot depends how good or bad your power strip is 

,with yours yes a moderate $2-300 power cord will make a improvement 

personally you need to spend around $3+ on up to truly get a line conditioner 

that truly makes a big noticeable difference .

yes the AC outlet and cables make a difference .

rule of thumb as I have stated many times ,having owned a Audio store 

onky 25% goes into the total of any product ,excluding cables , this includes all parts assembly and packaging ,the rest R&D overhead and marketing,markup

if you have a $1k conditioner maybe $200 went into it then packaging , bought in volume thsts why I state $3k on up is realistic if you want Good parts quality 

and a sizable improvement . Having been into modding Loudspeaker Xovers the biggest weak spot in most speakers, and electronics , the MFG have to make a decent profit or there is no reason to be in business,

cables can have markup up to 10x the investment in parts ,they can charge any price they choose per hr for their time that's why I look for quality and value with cables , No thanks on $3k power cords for me  !!

Your power cable can't make up for inadequacies on the way to your devices. At best, you can minimize voltage drop without actually improving noise pickup, a balancing act.

The two rules I live by are to keep noisy things out of my clean power zone.  That is, after conditioning I avoid any cheap wall warts used for network devices especially but also sometimes streamers.

I also use shielded cables after the conditioner to minimize noise pick up caused by crossing paths with digital signals and/or noisy power supplies.

So, I focus on keeping the after conditioning power as clean as possible, but if the area around your equipment crosses digital (i.e. Ethernet) much I might put a shielded cable before it as well just to keep as much out.

I wrote more about my views here:

https://inatinear.blogspot.com/2019/04/power-management-for-frugal-audiophiles.html

lots of misunderstanding in this area.  

1.  Power cannot be "cleaned".  it isn't just a nice sine wave with some noise the can be "filtered" out.  the sine wave coming into your house looks like crap.  Here is a link to a photo of a scope of the power coming into my house-chopped tops.  4+% thd.  https://photos.app.goo.gl/f3e4gqJ5m6QAqDLG8

2.  Power cables don't deal with noise.  Power cables deal with power.  Adequate power.  (I've given lots of other discussion before about the difference between nameplate power and short burst power transients to support base and dynamics so I won't go into that here).

3. You can't fix power downstream of a bad power component.   Put a resistor in a wire. you can't put an "unresistor" downstream of it.

4.  Power strips are almost always resistors.  The thermal breaker in their overload function is WORSE than a fuse and fuses are horrible for high quality sound.  Tiny wires inside.  Avoid.

Best of luck,

Jerry

Everything matters.  Full stop.  Read reviews and pick a PC that exhibits the sound characteristics that would combine well for your system/tastes.  Buy used and you’ll save a bundle, and if you buy wisely you can turn around and sell it for little/no loss  if for some reason they don’t work out and just repeat the process til you find “the one.”
A couple other meaningful and cost-effective upgrades would be to pick up something like a used Audience AR1p power conditioner that come up used on hifishark every month or so for only around $250.  Using that to feed your Wiremold will effectively give your whole system very good power conditioning for a song (this is what I did BTW and also use a Wiremold power strip).  Last, upgrading the wall outlet can also make a nice improvement for relatively very little cost.  Here’s a good one to consider…

https://www.cruzefirstaudio.com/maestro/the-maestro-outlet

Hope this helps, and best of luck.

   All I can say is it did for me. I use a Richard Gray power conditioner. I also replaced my outlets with 20 amp Hubble. I have a 15 to 20 amp plug adapter and tried all my extra power cords. I then purchased a Shunyata Venom HC 20 amp cord and it bested all my other cords. Please note that I have a modest system and I run low power tubes into high efficiency speakers. Considering most places have a 30 day return policy, give it a try. Happy Listening, Mike B. 

Yes. I would recommend a AudioQuest Hurricane, if that is in your budget.

My dealer friend had brought one over for my power amp. In about two seconds I was convinced… I had been audioning power cords for a year, and each, while having some positive attributes also attenuated some aspect. So I ordered one… a one meter. My friend said the two meters would be better… “you get more power conditioning with the extra length”. Well, I ended up with a one meter and a two meter. So I tried them over a week each. He was absolutely correct. The longer 2 meter was quieter and more detailed (yeah, those two are kind of the same thing). This is the way to look at them.

For the details of why. The founder of Shunyata has an article or video somewhere on his site that explains how looking at power like plumbing is wrong and explains how to look at it and why it works. Good explaination although I am a much bigger fan of Transparent, Cardas, and Audio Quest power cords.

That cable is probably the most important cable. It feeds multiple components. As suggested, use a thicker gauge power cable and one that is designed to transfer the power cleanly.

ozzy

From the wall socket to the power strip ( or any power conditioner )  ; I would think that the gauge of the cable has some importance .

10 gauge would be better than 14 gauge.

I have no idea how. I’m not knowledgeable in such matters. And the cable was borrowed/returnable, so no ulterior motive to "pretend" I liked it. In fact I kind of didn’t want to like it so I wouldn’t "have" to buy it...but it made a nice improvement for minimal cost, especially considering I got most of my money back when I sold it...BPT isn’t around anymore, so cannot ask them...

@jl35 

But the meaning with a power conditioner is to "clean the power". Right?
So how can the power cable to the conditioner matter? Or am I just stupid here?

it mattered on my BPT power conditioner when I went from their basic cord to their top of the line...

Sure it matters.

First let me state that I am a SR fan. I know a couple of years ago, they made a "master" power cable (I forget what they called it exactly...) for precisely this purpose. 

I believe all power cords matter and make a difference. Some components more than others.