$10 vs $100 power plug

The difference is the spring tension and plating surface. My preference is Rhodium. The surface is expensive to implement, but hard and less scratch prone. The typical brass surface is fine the first few uses, but scratches and leaves mars in the surface. This causes micro-arcing and ultimately noise. The ideal is two mirror smooth surfaces making contact aka an airtight connection or as close as possible. How much audio improvement will there be? Who knows? The improvements are typically overstated, but this is a small part of a lot of potential tweaks which, when added up may make a significant contribution. Depends on how crummy your parts are now and dedicated lines, wire gauge etc. If you pursue doing all you can, this is a relatively cheap tweak considering other things. It is all relative. Jallen

"Them golden ear Gods can't hear any better than us normal folk...."

They don't care about hearing. They care about going to the bank.

Rrog wrote,

"I doubt high end manufacturers feel they are compromising the sound of their products with the power cords they select."

Or they may be totally ignorant of the issue.

$1 plug to a $10 plug helped mine.
When I opened up the plug boxes in my room the romex was not pigtailed to each plug. It went in one side of the plug then out the other two screws on the other side. I pigtailed each plug in the circuit, them put in a hospital grade that obviously was built better and had more metal in it. I'am fortunate that my house is wired with #12 gage romex. Many tract homes are #14. Just like you cant pull 12 amps through a lamp cord, you cant pull it through a cheap ass plug with hardly any metal in it. Hey, worked for me. $100 plug? Never tried one.
-John