TT Power Cord

Power cords do make a difference. I even found that the power cord that serves the bias supply on my ESL speakers can make an audible difference. But the good news, IMO, is that cost is not a major factor. Cheap PCs can sound great. Expensive PCs can sound worse than factory-supplied PCs. I found that good speaker wire, if the gauge is high enough, usually make excellent PCs. Gauge is a major factor. Use 12-gauge from Home Depot or Loew's, if all else fails or on a budget, and if you know how to DIY a little. My theory, based on limited experimentation is that shielding and wire gauge are the major factors that distinguish good from bad, plus the amount of RFI and EMI in your own listening environment.

Tim (Pryso): Great minds think alike. I have been using Kimber 8TC as power cord for maybe 10 years. Each of my Atma-sphere monoblocks is connected to the wall socket with 8TC power cord. That product is uniquely suited to PC use, because of its construction. I also use a pair of Goertz copper speaker wires as power cords. Those are more difficult, because fitting the ribbon conductor into the clips in the typical plug or IEC connector is no mean feat.

Moonglum, Believe me, I am no cult worshiper. I come to the table with a bias that most of our gospel audio truths are BS. It makes no sense that PCs should make a difference in many instances, such as the one you cite. The only way I can see that they do is if you are using a device that makes large and variable current demands. And in such cases, gauge rules, the more copper the better. Also, there may be the issue of noise on the AC line. For that reason, conductors that employ some sort of HF filtering may be helpful. Otherwise, one has to make one's own decisions. I stopped worrying about it long ago, when I started to make my own cords from speaker wires, as mentioned above, or from just heavy gauge AC cord. I did find that a certain brand of PC using ribbon conductors really sounded best on my Sound Lab ESL bias supplies, and I have no idea why. Several other boutique cords sounded awful, less good than standard cords supplied by Sound Labs.

Moonglum,
I was not in the least offended by anything you wrote before my post. Skepticism is a needed commodity in this hobby. In your last post, you wrote:

"A similarly opposite benefit can come from the braided Kimber cables i.e if used on switch-mode power supplies they prevent their characteristic hash from getting back into your local mains supply, so not only suppressing incoming interference but the outgoing stuff as well."

What would be the mechanism for that effect of the Kimber cable, which I noted previously is easily converted to PC use? Do you think it's just the capacitance? Along those lines, I think one of the main benefits of an outboard tt motor controller that re-synthesizes AC is the same, motor noise is prevented from going backward into your local AC circuits.

Do you mean to say that Kimber 8TC, braided form, has been "banned"? I've got a lot of it here and there, all being used as PC, not as speaker wire.

But to your other point, I have found empirically that I prefer high capacitance cables probably because they typically have a low characteristic impedance (Zc). Zc is directly related to the square root of inductance divided by capacitance. I similarly like Goertz cables as speaker wire, and the better Transparent and MIT cables, as well. The latter two simply add a capacitance inside the little boxes at the distal end of the cable. My Atma amps very much seem to like cables with low Zc. They really did not like Nordost cables, for one example, which have an unusually high Zc, because mostly inductive.

But if braided Kimber is banned, why? Can't be because of capacitance per se, else MIT, Transparent and others would also have been banned.

I will be sure not to add any 8TC to my Cheerios.