After Market Power Cables - Gold or Snake Oil?

First off,thanks for all your responses. You have provided a lot of fuel for the friendly argument my friend and I are having. (fuel for him , that is!). For the sake of argument, let's look at a typical a/c path. Edison delivers 110 volts to your breaker box. That goes thru a 20A circuit breaker to about 50 feet of garden variety 12 or 14 guage copper wire. Said wire is terminated with a good quality 3 prong outlet box. Hot, neutral and ground are all securly connected. I don't see how adding 5 feet of any esoteric cable can possibly have any sonic benefit. It seems to me that finding an outlet 5 feet closer to the breaker box would provide as much of a theoretical improvement. If not more. *ASUMMING* that the power cord is at least as good as the house wiring.

Not snake oil. Too many folks say otherwise. In my case there is a difference in bass foundation and overall clarity. I have both TG Audio and Pure Note Sigma cords which are good values for power cables.

It's nice to see a new set of faces on the power cord issue helping the education process. As a long time advocate of after market cords I think my opinion has lost some weight in that I am often one of the same flag wavers. To have some new voices speak up brings a new level of credibility. Thanks!

Junking the 18 ga cables that come in the box for 10-12ga shielded cables with better connectors is a good idea for basic physical reasons, and doing so should cost under $50 a cord to make. Go to audioasylum.com for some great DIY cables. With adding a $500-$5000 power cord, now there's where the snake oil starts to really flow. Adding a power conditioner will drop the noise floor and filter more then any cable will ever be able to, and will show definite results, good, bad or ugly, whereas big buck powercable swaps will have a person without unlimited funds struggling to justify the expense beyond a sufficient 12ga p/c....

People who argue against the sonic benefits of powercords either, in my opinion, haven't tried them, or have equipment designed such that they don't make much difference (either because they don't resolve the information or are designed with spectacular power supplies: I gather this is true to some extent with certain brands of electronics such as Bryston). In my system, which includes Audio Research electronics and Transparent cabling, the differences between power cables and the improvements they can offer are both shocking (to me, a former skeptic) and instantly obvious to anyone. It's not subtle. Forget electronic logic on this one. Bumblebees can't fly either, according to aeronautics. The history of science is the recognition of clear phenomena, and trying to find a way to explain apparently anomalous conclusions after the fact.

Indeed, in medicine, particularly in Britain, there's a movement towards what's called "evidence-based medicine." When I naively suggested to a group of doctors at a party that I assumed all medicine was "evidence based" they could barely contain their laughter. Figure out what works first, they said, figure out why later... or maybe not at all (no one really understands even now why aspirin works, an analogy I've cited in these forums [fora?] before). Same here (if towards less serious ends).