I slipped three of these snakebite cords into my system after owning just one basic after market powercord (on the CD player). When I got to this last cord and slipped the 3rd snakebite into the CD player there was a significant degrade in the sound quality. It was like everything slowed down by a few nanoseconds and the music was having to push through syrup to get out the speakers. So, I left the system on and alone for a 24 hours and crossed my fingers. Now I've got a quieter noise floor with smoother more natural sounding vocals and music. Very nice, definite improvement, and it seems to continue to improve as it settles in. If this is what a basic power cord does, makes me wonder about what the big ones can do.