PS Audio Ultimate outlet

The question was ..do the Ps Audio outlets improve sound.? The answers varied, but were mostly negative. That saves many posters time and money, and was of real service to Auidogon's members, unlike the " I know it all, and these fools are wasting their money " attitude some here are espousing. As to whether cables, outlets, line conditioners make a difference, anyone denying it is wasting our time. The issue is really, what kind of difference, and is it worth it? The objectivist vs. the subjectivist topic is so old. Statistical testing for differences is only part of the criteria for judging, not all of it. Our results are always limited by the tests themselves. Experience, scepticism, and an open mind should be respected as in Dekay's case. No one here knows it all, and I am glad of that fact Mr. Stevemj.

No money - I don't know why. I am only claiming that it has nothing to do with the fidelity of the sound. The power from the wall gets hacked up by the rectifiers and dumped into the storage capacitors. The power supplies have a significant amount of ripple on their plus and minus rails. Small irregularities on the power line will make small irregulaities on the relitively large amount of ripple on the rails. The fidelity of the sound is uneffected by this ripple until an amplifier is driven into clipping. During clipping the ripple of the power supply shows up on the top of the wave form the amp is trying to reproduce. At this point distortion is very high and audible.

There are some things that just don't need to be tested. Here is an analogy to the power cord, distribution, outlet senario. You are in a small submarine well below the surface waves (power supply ripple) whose particle's vertical movement is in a circular fashion and extends something like two times the height of the waves. Large seaguls are landing and taking off from the surface creating little waves. My contention is that in the submarine you will not feel the effect of the birds activity.

What make these products even more ridiculous is that they don't do anything to the line anyway (they don't stop the seaguls from landing). I read an ad for one of the ac line conditioners that bragged about not having any coils, filters, transformers or capacitor to spoil the quality of the sound. Of course there is no sound on the power supply side. And the very things that would clean up the ac line are the things they brag about not having.

You could by a ferroresonant transformer. They actually do clean up and stabalize the AC power. They provide constant voltage and tremendous surge protection. They won't make things sound better but they will protect your valuable equipment. Problem is that they make a lot of mechanical noise due to magnetostriction (the transformer laminations actually grow and shrink as the the magnetic field varies). If you could sound proof one in a box it would be a useful addition to your system.

stevemj,

sorry, but what's all this *blather*?!? yust *listen*, man! sometimes the difference in sound between power conditioners, etc, is so obvious, it's a no-brainer, *anyone* could hear the difference. yes, even power conditioners, that aren't even in the signal path.

i yust recently removed a 20 amp 2400 watt voltage stabilizer/conditioner from my system to see if it was doing anything to the sound - i'd never run the current set-up w/o it. well, the sound improvement running my amps straight into the wall was huge - my wife came in & asked what did i do to make the stereo sound so good? i'm now gonna try the vans evers unlimiter - if it does *nothing* to the sound, isle be quite content! :>)

and, i've heard a system where the addition of a ps-audio p300 made a big improvement.

so, while i'm all for saving money, i don't make yudgments about things i've never tried. it's patently *obvious* yuve never tried these things ewe diss so much, perhaps cuz ewe can't see the logic behind how/why they work. why is it so obvious, ewe may ask? cuz if ya *did* try 'em, yude hear the difference! unless ya really *are* deaf...

regards, doug s.

a-gon:

why did you delete paul mcgowan's post from this thread? while it may be construed as adwertizing, it was also most useful info, from a mfr, admitting that there is a problem w/one of his products...

doug s.

Yes, I should note that I've been sent a revised outlet in which the fuse is no longer in series. This is said to drastically improve performance. I'm going to run it in and will report in a few days.