The power cord is the first link between the wall and your music, and treating it as an afterthought is a mistake.
I've heard the pushback a hundred times: the signal is AC at 60 hertz, not audio — any decent power supply handles whatever comes in before it reaches the circuits that matter. The cord is a commodity. Those of us who've actually swapped cables in a resolving system know that's not the whole story. A power supply filters what comes in, yes. But its ability to do so depends on what it's working against. A noisy AC line is a harder job than a clean one. A well-designed power cable with good shielding and the right conductor geometry reduces how much of that arrives at the supply in the first place — and it also minimizes self-generated noise from capacitive coupling and inductance in the cable's own construction.
Less junk in means less junk to filter out.
Can you hear it? Absolutely. On a resolving system, you hear a lower noise floor, more space around instruments and voices, a blacker background, and a sense that everything feels more grounded and stable. System sensitivity matters enormously here — the more transparent the chain, the more clearly any upstream change will show up in the sound.
Are proper power cables expensive? Heck yes! But that doesn't mean you have to go crazy (though nut jobs like me do). The key is investing in as big a bang for the buck as you can manage and of course, getting the power right in the first place—with a proper AC regenerator.
Electricity is the foundation everything else rests on.
Treat it accordingly.
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