Power cord heiarchy

You have to try it out. There is no rule that I have found to be consistent, not to mention that the science around all this is nebulous at best.

The front end will help the entire system and often this is where you have most of the interconnects, phono stages etc. Good isolation counts here but that should be easy to assess as most of these sort of problems are very audible.

I have found power cords making a difference even before power regenerators (shouldnt they make zero difference since power is completely regenerated?!)

But the most important thing about power is that your own home electrical system, noise etc is unique. And your equipment may be excellent or not but its interaction with these issues is component-specific and it relates to how good, isolated etc the power supply is. It also will depend on the design itself, ie are you using tube SETs or some ss baanced system or what.

Having said all that, I find that the biggest difference I can discern in my own system is when I power the phono stage, especially my Goldmund ph3, with different power cords. The effect is less with the wavac phono, maybe because of its extreme design on the power supply (3 boxes.)

Enjoy, this is worth trying out, it makes quite a difference.

Best,
Michael

Schipo, the designs always have tradeoffs and conditions in the design facilities may differ than the ones at home. Good manufacturers generally address that but i know of more than one amazing sounding amps that do benefit from power conditioning, better current etc. That is quite clear and not a psychoacoustic phenomenon. Now, extending that argument to power cords is a bit more artistic as the science is not yet conclusive. nordost recently made some efforts to prove their point and I am not well versed enough with electrical theory and practice to be able to fully comprehend what they are saying. That in itself may be an issue.
In any event, imho power cords do make a difference and one that is often not subtle. In my system and my conditions, I find that they make a bigger difference than even interconnects.