It was nothing personal. I'm sure he's a good guy. And forum SNR is as subjective as cable Foo. This forum doesn't have as rich an assortment of Fooevangaleestas as others, and that's something to consider if anyone has not read the true Foofans. Here is a sample I fell over recently. It's a bit long but it allows the full Foo flavor to pop:
The standard power cable provided by the maunfacturer is not capable of responding to the immense demands of tranient signals. More advanced designs allow the conveyance of enough power in a timely manner such that an amp can perform up to its full potential and reproduce those transients more faithfully.
Monoblocks do assist in the dynamic reproduction of music because of their large transformers /power supplies, but it really depends on the amount of current actually drawn by the amp as to how effective a third party power cable might be.
Smaller components that have a smaller power supply will "generally" show more of an improvement in sound quality when a better quality power cord is employed
Components that employ Wal-wart power supplies will excell when their power supply is switched to something more substantial including a better power cord.
Also - the quality of the actual conductors used in a powercord will improve the speed of the reproduction of those transients - e.g. that drum will actually sound much crisper (faster) and the bass will have more texture and slam.
I prefer silver plated conductors because they are affordable and offer almost the same perofrmance as solid silver.
Then there is the geometry of the cable itself - this contributes to the overall clarity and imaging...
- The standard geometry of three wires side-by-side - perhaps with a slight twist - i.e. "The Norm" - is the worst possible geometry to use - it’s worst attribute is - it s noisy. To improve performance companies simply rely on conductor quality to achieve improvements in sound.
- Braided cables are less noisy and offer significantly better dynamic performance than the standard geometry and will show discernable improvements on components with smaller power suplies
- the best I have tried to date is a helix geometry - where the neutral and ground conductors are wound around the live condcutor - they have an extremely fast dynamic response with very low noise characteristics that results in the most realistic repeoduction of music.
So to sum up - that cable that comes in the box will do the job - but very poorly in comparison to other cables and especially a helix cable.
Many others besides myself have tried the helix design on a variety of systems (i.e. solid state and tube) and all agree they provide a significant improvement.
If you really want your system to soar to new heights - also employ IC’s and speaker cables that also use a helix geometry.
Isn't that just special?
Wow yes that's special! Not only is everything quoted 100% wrong, all also show a spectacular lack of knowledge as to how power supplies even work!!
Foomeisters seem to have no inkling that gear is actually powered by the charge in the smoothing capacitors for a start, also known as reservoir capacitors cos... surprise, surprise, they act as a reservoir... these are kept charged by very sharp pulses of energy from the rectifier, 100 times a second, so very slowly compared to transients etc, which come almost entirely from the capacitors.
There is also nothing "quiet", "smooth", "linear" etc about the process! Imagine cups of water being thrown hard into the reservoir from a height and hitting with a big splash and the analogy is getting there... So long as the reservoir is kept topped up beyond the head of water required in the still area where the water is being drawn from it makes diddly squat difference how the reservoir was filled up!
Do they realise (no!) that the mains is literally switched on and off 100 times a second by the rectifiers? Yes literally. If you put on/off switches there instead and could switch them 100 times a second
and at just the right time you would have a great rectifier!
Rectifiers only conduct when the forward voltage is about 0.7V higher than that in the capacitor, hence they switch on only around the peak of the mains waveform and off again as soon as the mains has gone below its peak value and starts to go "down the other side of the hill" (sorry for the inelegant analogies tech types... ), hence all the power from the mains comes in as very short "hammer blows" of energy that take up only about 5% of the mains waveform.... top of the class for anyone inferring from this that the mains is only even connected at all for about 5% of the time!
The reservoir analogy is why capacitors have a ripple current rating as well BTW
EDIT: I see John had a go along the same lines whilst I was typing....