AC Conditioners: Must Have Tweak or More Voodo

Time for your landlord to invest in an electrician to replace/repair the non-working outlets. Outlets that make poor connections are very dangerous, in higher current situations they will overheat and start a fire. They also will drop the available voltage to your components.

Your local housing inspector can also help if your landlord needs additional motivation. I'd also make sure the smoke detectors were functional.

Sounds like your wiring could be dangerously out of code. I'd get it fixed before even thinking about a power conditioner. After that, I suggest getting a power conditioner that offers spike protection, component isolation (from each other), and power line noise suppression. There are lots of good ones to choose from. Check out the "Power strips" thread that was started on 2/5/02. Good luck.

Many conditioners use the ground on a 3 way plug to get rid of the noise from the digital components. I agree with others that you would need to ground the cheater plug to get the best results.

Fixing the wiring first sounds like good advise. -- As to AC accessories, my guess is they all have their own character. As an example, I've tried the PS Audio P300, Ultimate Outlet, and Juice Bar (and still own and use all three) with a single brand of upgrade power cord (Silver Audio Power Burst). The Power Burst gave tighter bass and more clear mids. The Ultimate Outlet improved the blackness around notes with a 'mellow' presentation, the P300 also improved blackness but resulted in a very refined high end. Since I feel most systems overemphasize the high end, I nearly discarded it, but upon further listening concluded it did not exaggerate but rather 'revealed' the high end (just an impression without factual basis). I'm using the UO in a dedicated headphone setup and the P300 in my main system (but I've read that you can use them together). The P300 didn't have enough outlets, so I used a relatively inexpensive power strip that allowed use of your own power cord. After having cords loosen in this strip I bought the $200 Juice Bar on a 30 day trial. No contest, immediate improvement. -- I neither have the time nor money to compare all or even many of the different power cords, conditioners, outlets, etc but from this limited experience believe that for a given system they will all have an impact in different ways in much the same way that different interconnects and speaker cables give different results. Good luck.

I am using an Audio Tekne power tranformer and I plug everything into it including 2 amps. Works better than the ps300, titan power block. Since I couldn't put dedicated lines in without ripping the house apart this was definitely the way to go. Audio Tekne is a relative obscure company in the U.S. but has great products. The voltage changes where I live are common and this tranformer cured that problem.