I'm still a skeptic. As a professional consumer researcher, I know the only valid way to do these comparisons is through a blind listening test. I looked online and was only able to find one blind study on power cords for audio. It wasn't perfectly done, but it was pretty good. Sorry, I don't have time to go online and find it again. But I remember the conclusions clearly.
The data revealed two things. First, power cables do not impact sound quality in any reliable way, even when listened to by serious audiophiles. Second, people listening are convinced that they hear differences. How can both these things be true?
Here's an example. You have people listen to the same system playing the same song with two different power cables, and you repeat this several times. The first time they listen, they tell you that A sounds clearly better than B. But the next time they listen you flip a coin and either make A from round 1 A again in round 2, or you make A from round 1 B in round 2. Then they listen again, same system, same song. This time they swear that one power cord sounds better than the other, but it's not the same cord they thought sounded better 5 minutes before. You can repeat this many times and determine that their preferences are, in fact, totally random.
Neuroscience research shows that the brain plays a much more active role in constructing our sensory experiences than we normally think it does. In a famous series of experiments, it was shown that when people are told a bottle of wine is more expensive, it actually tastes better to them. It's not that they lie to try and look sophisticated. But brain scans reveal that they actually get a more enjoyable experience when they think the wine costs more.
One other interesting outcome of the blind listening experiment on power cables. Even though the results showed that people's preferences were random, most people were convinced that they had heard an important difference. The placebo effect is very powerful. You probably do hear a difference. But it's not because of the power cables; it's because your brain is constructing that experience for you.
For fun, do try this at home. Get a bunch of friends together and do some blind random comparisons between your new power cable and your old one. Resist the temptation to cheat. Be sure you really don't have a clue which cable you are listening to.
Here is how to do it right. Lable one cable 'heads" and the other "tails". Have someone privately flip a coin and then, when only they can see, plug in the corresponding cord. Listen. Then have someone flip the coin again so only they can see. If it's heads twice in a row, that's fine, use the same cable twice in a row. After the second listening, have all the listeners privately write down if they liked the cable in the second listening the same amount, more, or less, than the cable in the first listening. Do this 10 times. Each time people compare the cable they just heard to the previous cable. be sure to obey the results of the coin toss. It's ok if at the end you have 7 heads and only 3 tails, or if you have 4 tails in a row, or whatever. Just obey the count toss. At the end, see if people dependably liked one more than the other. And just as importantly, when the same power cord was used twice in a row, could people tell that it was the same, or did they say the like one better than the other. If you do this, let us know the results.
If you're interested in this sort of thing, you might enjoy this book https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/031649822X/ref=x_gr_w_bb_glide_sin?ie=UTF8&tag=x_gr_w_bb_glide_sin-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=031649822X&SubscriptionId=1MGPYB6YW3HWK55XCGG2
If the link does work, search on Amazon for The Things We Love: How Our Passions Connect Us and Make Us Who We Are. It goes into the science behind why we love music, among other things. I recommend it highly, but I'm biased because I wrote it.
