Snobgoblin: Love your handle. I can't say I am qualified to have an opinion on this, since I have never listened to a mains cable. But I have listened to a lot of other things that are supposed to make HUGE differences and just DON'T hear them. I hear small differences but not big ones. And considering the subtlety of difference I have heard in other kinds of wires, I just can't get worked up over $200.00 for a "Mains" cable (sounds better than "power cord"). I do hear some differences a good decent speaker cable and zip cord. But after that it is - in my opinion - all voodoo for the "true believers" in high end - the "it's got to be lots better if you throw a lot of money at it" crowd.) I made a statement questioning the supposedly vast differences in high end audio equipment in a post of my own - "AUDIO AND THE EMPORERS NEW CLOTHES" recently. Suggestions that money doesn't always make it better will always raise the ire of some of the true believers. (I wonder if maybe the money is what they are "true believers" in). Then again, maybe our ears just aren't as good as theirs. But if that is the case I am thank the good Lord that it is not nearly so expensive for me to enjoy good music as some of these others.
The fallacy of ac treatment
I see a lot of threads related to managing and tweaking the ac powerout end of electronic systems. Much has been said about dedicated wiring, termination and even the right kind of extension cords to use. I work for an electric utility; and that's the extent of my credibilty here. The majority of you will no doubt be far more erudite wrt music hardware. Just a thought, though: domestic ac distribution goes thus: power station-step up-city-step down-subdivision-final step down. As far as the utility is concerned, you and all your neigbours are collectively the load for the step down tranformer. Any inductance/capacitance created by your neigbour running motors/tubelights, etc is felt by the lot of you. Additionally, the voltage frequency will almost always move around a tolerance from 50hz as the whole country turns on the air, off the lights - changes all the time as peaker plants ramp up etc. Nothing can change that- the frequency of the grid supplying your city is the frequency in the mains at your house. So what's my point? Well only that how much difference can the last 10 feet of cabling, etc make when the other hundreds of miles are outside of your control? And more importantly, frequency is one of the most imp parameters for measuring electricity quality (your expensive hand-coiled toroids are entirely subject to the f in the primaries) and nothing other than running an f generator can shield you from that. Methinks all the improvements you see from ac cord treatments are pyschosomatic. But that's cool.