Assessing quality of power


I am now at the point of looking into power conditioning-regeneration and have read many of the long informative but highly technical threads here. My question: Is there a simple way to assess the current quality of your power, aside from purchasing a conditoner and asessing the result? For example with dirty power can you hear that through your speakers when system is powered but nothing playing (CD player on Pause) and can voltage flucuations be assessed by a simple Radio Shack instrument?

I suspect my power is fairly clean. I live 1/4 mile from anyone else, have my own transformer on the pole 30 feet from the house, have wiring and box that are about 5 years old. My listening room is in a new addition with its own new service, so all motors such as the frig are on an entirely different service box. There is one computer and several rheostats being served off of the addtion box, but all are usually off when I am listening to stereo. My lights do dim when the amp first turns on. What should I look for? How can I determine if dedicated lines or a power conditioner would yield more bang for buck. Thanks
128x128gammajo
You would need a high-bandwidth oscilloscope to see how clean or dirty your incoming power is. Best bet would be to simply get a fairly inexpensive power conditioner like something from PS Audio and try it out. If you can't hear a difference, you can get most of your money back (if not all). Experimentation is really the best way to find out.

Arthur
I agree with Arthur. This is a complicated subject and you're going to have to assess your power-quality situation with your ears by auditioning pc's and/or regenerators and listening to judge the sonic changes. In addition, another consideration in deciding about the quality of your power is whether or not you feel you're getting the performance expected from the quality of your gear and system. If the answer right now is "no," then power-quality may play a part in under-performance. For me, based on my gear and system, plus the results others are getting with similar gear, I feel my setup is not playing up to it's potential.
I use a Shunyata Hydra 4 which is fairly well respected as a conditioner and don't feel that my front end gear and system sonics are up to potential. I've tried various changes to my system (electronics, etc.) Wanted to do dedicated lines but that's impractical for me in my current home. So I'm about to try a regenerator to see if that will raise the level of performance in my system. Some good questions to ask yourself are, "am I satisified with the sonics my system is producing? And, does my system seem to be performing up to it's potential or is it underperforming based on my gear?" The answers may help you judge your power situation.
OK, Looks like I have to try one to find out. It would be nice if the component gave you a message that it has been correcting voltage and how much of the sine wave it had to reconstruct. and how much electronic hash it blocked, sort of like an antivirus program ("We have found six viruses on your computer today"). Then you would know it was doing something.
Foster - Are you leaning toward PS audio, exact power, or something else?
Thanks for the input
Joe