I had a Monster power block once, thinking, I’d fit and forget and I’ve done something. After a couple of years it stated making a mechanical buzzing noise that was far worse any potential noise it was supposed to rectify and so into the recycle it went…
Don’t make such jokes. Four years ago I made a joke about audiophile routers in this forum and today they are reality 
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It varies from 126 to about 130; never goes below 125. I called the power company and they sent out a guy with an obviously fixed meter who measured it in the teens. Yet I have 2 monster power boxes with meters AND a separate meter I bought from Radio Shack, and they all measure 10 volts higher than his measurements. So, just don’t trust what ComEd says…
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We did do that already 30 years ago. When the first people found out, that there is a difference in powercables, I built special cables. 4mm diameter, nice looking. Cost for me was 25€, a friend of mine sold them for 350€ in his Hi-End audio shop. We did not give any promise. Just try it, if you like it, buy it. The return rate was very low. Most people bought them and were convinced, it is much better. That was easy money!
Do you understand, why I’m a bit sceptical?
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'Fraid you’ve told that to the wrong crowd.
You just confessed to enabling a behavior that most people here despise.
my prediction is that the next silly thing we will see is an audiophile vpn service for people streaming their music from the internet.
That’s even better than woo woo power cables because it will be a monthly recurring cost and not just a one shot price.
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Prolonged 130 volt readings involve insurance claims. I’ve been there - they don’t want to admit there could be a problem on their end. “You must have a faulty neutral” etc. The one engineer I dealt with at Edison was an honest guy and told me about the faulty part they fixed in response to my first inquiry. With smart meters, the utility companies have a full record of what the readings are. After my second go around with them, last year they shut down my neighborhood cluster and replaced the pad transformer (which happens to sit on my property). Took them a few hours. Readings have been closer to 122 volts since the “green box” fix. Coincidence? Maybe. I’ll have a better feel for it in the summer where the problems are more likely to occur with AC demand, etc.
Well, they all could hear a difference, it was like a veil was gone. And they all became solid craftsmanship for the money. And there was no promise about exotic materials and left winded oxygen free copper.
Since it was 30 years ago, do you remember what parts you were using. Good wire and good connectors don’t need to exotic.
Belden 83803 plus a couple of Wattgates will make a great cord.
Unless… What if the woo-woo power cables had their own separate Ethernet connection? For “updates” and “active monitoring”? Would require a subscription and monthly fee, of course. There could be a special, and of course expensive, network switch which could allow multiple power cables to share a single Ethernet connection, too. And perhaps a display module which could be plugged into the switch, to allow continuous monitoring of the state of each cable.
Nothing wrong with helping a phool part with his/her money.
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So, you despise people who buy such products, but not those who sell them?
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I don’t despise either. What I don’t like is when all the subjectivist bs and audiophool bait marketing is bandied about as fact.
OK, my mistake. Some of your past comments seemed to be quite disdainful.
Well, fair to say I don’t have high regard for the peddlers perpetuating the myths, but I don’t despise them, cockroaches need to earn a living too.
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The first power cable your equipment sees is the one plugged into it. Therefore it’s the first one to influence the electricity to your equipment.
P
Today I take a a signal cable 5x4mm2. Then I use plugs which are big enough to fit 2x4mm2 into it for plus and minus. For earth I just take a single 4mm2 wire. I do not only use the screws for connecting the cables. I solder the connections.
I live in Switzerland and have my suppliers there. But these signal cables are nothing exiting.
These signal cables can be ordered with a shield.
So i have 2x4mm2 for + and -, 1x4mm2 for earth. The shield I connect only on the receiver side on earth. Additionally I get some big enough ferrite cores for this cable. Ferrite cores give me a passive low pass filter.
Then you add a braided sleeve and terminate it with a heat shrinkable tubing.
Material cost is something like 20€, time required per cable is 1/2 hour.
Or you buy the diamond cables mentioned in this thread, that is about the same.
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Yep, a lot can happen to electricity in the three nanoseconds it takes to traverse a 1m power cable 
For sure as anyone working with precision measurement equipment (think National Physic Laboratory) or medicine (think of MRI, CT scanners and electro cardiac arrhythmia treatment equipment) will know.
Is a HIFI a precision data retrieval device? I think so.
P
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Very true, but I’m betting that most MRI and CT scanners (and a whole bunch of other precision devices) have fairly standard, fit for purpose power cables that don’t have a negative impact on their ultimate accuracy.