Power Conditioning experience...

Let me start with a quote…

”The sonic benefits of a good line conditioner include a “blacker” background with less low-level grunge and noise. The music seems to emerge from a perfectly quiet and black space, rather than a grayish background… If you haven’t tried a power-line conditioner, you may not have heard your system at its best.” -Robert Harley, The Complete Guide to High-End Audio

I have never looked into power conditioning units in the past and if I had to analyze why I would suspect two reasons, one is the cost and two being skeptical. While I could understand having something in place to protect all my gear, I didn’t want to purchase something that may hinder the performance either, which is what I envisioned in something “inexpensive”, right or wrong.

Last week I took delivery of a Furman IT Reference 20i power conditioner and I must say that I should have done this a long time ago! As much as I do not want to be over the top in writing this, it can’t be helped. (Let me mention here that it was several days after hooking it up before I was able to give a good listen, more as to why later; so if there was some break-in or warm up period that took place, I cannot comment.)

Let me save some of you the trouble of looking, the Furman unit I have lists for $3500, not cheap! (If one is interested though, shop around.) I realize that there are some here that may not have that amount, or much more than that, in their entire system; I only have experience with this piece.

I am simply stunned every time I play my system and it doesn’t matter the source, digital front-end, tuner or satellite radio from my dish. The differences I hear are many, such as, sound stage - depth and width -, imaging, dynamics, bottom end - weight and tautness - and the “blackness” mentioned by RH. This “blackness” is an interesting one to me as I have questioned it in the past and still find it hard to put into words but when you hear it, or rather don’t, you know it. I wish I was better at my descriptions as even though I know I have claimed a lot, there is more.

Adding this unit has drastically changed my system for the better and I wanted to share this with others; I realize this is a lot of money, whether you can get the same for less money I don’t know, but it is an addition I cannot recommend highly enough. (I realize there are many factors where the effects may differ from one another, but consider RH’s last line in the quote above.) I now wonder how some past pieces I have owned would have performed had I had something like this.

I have questioned my McIntosh gear at times in the area of dynamics and bottom end, as Mac amps are known to be slightly less dynamic and softer on the extremes; these areas have been greatly improved. Other gear may still be better in these areas but I am not sure the differences would be enough for me to give up all I like in the Mac gear.

I mentioned above that it took several days for me to give a good listen, this was due to two circumstances, one I was busy with the holidays and two, I have an issue with a hum when I use the outlet dedicated for the amp, so I have the amp plugged in another section of the Furman while I track this down with Furman, but with the holidays we are missing each other. (It was plugged in on Monday I listened on Friday, hum free.) This has led to some of the most pleasurable listening I have ever done, listening that Friday for some 2 hours straight and 3 hours+ the following day, something I can’t say I have done in a long time, if ever; but song after song I am amazed, even hours later.

I’d like to give a special thanks to AG member Victor Boccalon (Victorbm3) as he also has a Furman unit and gave me great input before I made my purchase, though I still never expected the results to this level.

Hopefully others can chime in with their experience.

I close with returning to the opening quote from RH, in my experience his words are very true, and if anything conservative; that said, I took this quote from the Audio Advisor magazine and it looks like an abbreviated quote.

Brian