Does power conditioning really matter?

Yes I totally agree. Go with PS Audio products. I have the Duet and it's a surge suppressor and a decent power conditioner. They use superior internal components to Monster. Monster is probably an overrated product line. Besides the owner sues all companies who use the Monster name. The folks at PS Audio really know their business.

You can see the improvement in picture quality with a good power conditioner.

Somec59.....maybe YOU can see some improvement, but I have seen absolutely none...nada...no change at all.

Why does everyone assume that because they do or think they do hear/see some difference....then everyone else will see the great improvement as well.

For 99% of the world, it's hype....I am going to assume that although I have 20 years in pro sound (live sound..not sales) and can't see or hear most of the differences claimed on these boards...that there is maybe 1% of the audiofiles who can hear some difference.

Don't generalize folks....what YOU hear/see isn't necessarily what the next person hears/sees. And in a blind test, about 1/2 the people who claim to perceive a difference would fail.

Most of the time when someone tells me that something's too loud/too soft..or muffled or bright...I go into the sound booth for about a minute...come back out and ask if it's better. 99.9% of the time I get "wow...great, what a difference....and, as you guessed,I changed nothing.

I would have to disagree with most of the above posts. I use a Monster unit for surge protection, and it has no detrimental effect on the sound of my system. Very recently I tried a PS Audio Quintet, and was extremely disappointed. There was a very slight improvement with digital components, but it was VERY detrimental to LP playback - greatly shrunken soundstage, very compressed dynamics, and it removed other things as well - I could not hear nearly as much of the ambient sound of the original recording space, nor were instrumental timbres as accurate, it seemed to remove some of the harmonic overtones.

All that said, power conditioners are supposedly much more effective for digital video than digital audio, so you might give a cheap one a try for that purpose. I would definitely not recommend one for two-channel listening, especially analog.

Thanks to all who have posted. My friend Matt is skeptical of all this so what we are going to do is get his new system set up and use a surge suppressor he has on hand. I have a PS Audio Ultimate Outlet that I will bring to his house and then we can compare. I think it is clear that if power conditioning helps and it always seems to draw a controversial response, the place in his system where it might help is with his plasma screen. If he can notice a difference, then maybe it will be worth it to pony up a few hundred more dollars.