My intention wasn't to 'troll'... Bear in mind that I'm referring ONLY to 'High End' Power Cords here - Hell yes, ICs and speaker cables make a diff, I've seen it on my (decidedly pedestrian!) system (Arcam 6+ integrated with Marantz CD 6000 KI sig and Celestion 5 speakers) Sturdy power cords made to electrical codes and Good Industry Practice is definitely a requirement - ther's nothing new about this. Hospitals use good quality bits because that's the relevant code and stuff like X-Ray machines draw oodles of power. Fine, use those robust pieces, you cant go wrong. BUT we need to draw the line somewhere folks. I've changed my power cord out of necessity (UK plugs to India code) - I'm certainly not blessed aurically to hear anything different. I'll bet it would sound coarse if the grounding was bad or the plugs were corroded, but that's plain to see and understand. What isn't logically consistent is the magic a $500 cord can do. And IMHO the cord better have a degree sorcery from Hobbitt U. to fulfil its expectationas. Finally, that's all I'm saying.
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.