After Market Power Cables - Gold or Snake Oil?

Redkiwi,
Why ask why, you ask. As a musician/serious amature recordist, believe me I have seen more than my share of "floobie dust". Like the time a guitarist was dubbing in some "fills" for a soft rock piece that had already been recorded. After the first take, the producer said he thought the performance was great but he did not like the sound of the guitar, did the guitarist have another he could try. The guitarist said yes he did (tho in reality he did not). He set the guitar on the floor (out of the producer's sight) waited a few seconds, pucked up the same guitar, played the same fills and the producer thought the sound was perfect.

Or the time a mixing engineer was tweaking the compressor on a vocal track (in the presence of the vocalist). Only after the settings were thought to be "just right" that the engineer realize that the track was not even being sent to the compressor!!

Sometimes changing things changes sound for reasons other than the changes.

I have neither the time nor money to A/B a dozen $1000 power cables.

That is why I ask why.

But my point is that the "why" you might receive may have nothing to do with our claims of a sound difference, so if we are deluded you are merely asking for a rationale so that you can be deluded too.

Redkiwi,
No, when I ask you "why" I am not saying you are deluded, I am just asking if you really know what phenomenon caused the sonic difference you hear. Psycho-acoustic effects, like optical illusions, "feel" like the real thing.
This is in no way the product of "delusion" as clinicly defined. It happens to everyone.
I know this is true because I have experienced it myself.
(the "compressor" story in my last post)!!

I am not trying to be contentious, I would just to like to know why people are hearing what they are hearing.

Checkmate110 - You are correct, the total inductance from the panel is what matters.

M_Cassar - there is one other possible benefit of a power cable and that is filtering. This filtering can be only on the ground wire or the current-carrying wires. Ground-wire filtering makes a lot of sense, since there should not be any AC current on the ground anyway, since this constitutes ground-loop noise. Filtering on the current-carrying wires, hot and neutral is another matter. I personally do not believe in it (and my designs do have hot/neutral filtering), but I suppose some components with poorly designed power supplies could benefit from this. Certainly not amplifiers though.