AC Conditioners?

I've taken flack for my opinion on power conditioners in the past, but what the hell, here I go again. There's no doubt the quality coming out of the wall is garbage, no need for debate there. One of the distinguishing feaures of most high end gear is attention to detail in their power supply design. Massive supplies, with no holds barred parts quality, deal with the shortcomings of your local electric company. Conditioning the AC so these sophisticated supplies essentially sit idle is redundent at best, and certainly a waste of money. I'd invest in a conditioner if I had mid-fi gear, but that really doesn't apply to most of us that frequent this site. Time to put the body armour on and dodge the bullets...

I use a Monster HTS2000 power conditioner with good results. I live in LA and have a very dirty power supply. It may restrict the dynamics somewhat but it is hard to tell because without it the background noise level is much higher, and there is as well a very noticable drop in detail. My system sounds better and more musical with the Monster and it was only $125.00 mail order. I also run my amp through one of the special "amp" outputs (that claim to not restrict power/dynamics) with better results than straight into the wall. I guess that it all boils down to which is the worse of two evils in your particular situation. My gear is not expensive but is also not midfi.

I live in Chicago and have the lesser of the evils syndrome as well. I use a newcastle conditioner and the noise it reduces is nicer to listen to than the garbage on the line. My system is about 25K retail, so I do not think I am at a Mid-FI level. I mainly use the conditioner in case of spikes and browns. In the spring and the fall I do plug directly in the wall between midnight and 4am to realize what my system can do -- and it does some things better on the conditioner and others better on the wall outlet. Trade-offs galore...

There's a Cinepro 20 Line Balancer for sale right now at less than 50% of retail, on Audiogon. I have one, and it's far better than the API Power Wedge I now have in basement storage. If you can afford $850 (a guess from memory), you can't do better. An idiotically lukewarm Stereophile review has kept this conditioner from being as popular as it should be. It splits 120V into 60V+ and 60V-, a brilliantly simple idea, which leads to the lowest noise floor ever.