Does power conditioning really matter?

It really depends on your home power situation and your gear. I traded down a few years ago from a higher end system, to a nice home theater system and got rid of my RGPC conditioners. I just used a basic Belkin Home theater surge suppresor for the reciever, TV, cable and disc player in that system, and I was very happy. For the money, that was really a great system.

As I moved back into better audio gear, for a couple of months I focused on just the audio gear and didn't do anything about the power. I was pretty happy, then after some research I bought an APC S15 and it was a revelation. Man, it opened up everything sonically. I didn't really see any improvement in the picture quality, but the sound really improved. Deeper, higher, more transparent and faster.

Then I started switching amps, I had been using digital amps (Bel Canto, Spectron, Innersound) and switched over to traditional SS amps (Cary 500MB) and the APC started running out of juice!! Sound would start to degrade at higher volumes. So I bought an PS Audio Duet, and got the amps off of the APC, and "Voila" great sound again. Actually better than ever, and the amps once again opened up, and sounded much better than when just plugged into the wall.

So that's my $0.02. It depends on your gear, and your home's power. Our power sucks, and we get 4 - 5 power surges, noticable, mid day every day. We have fried 3 different control boards on Thermador ovens (thank God for the Home warranty), and more than one laptop has died a painful death. But the audio/video gear is safe.

On an 8 foot projector screen you will see differences in picture quality, sharpness, contrast, noise, artifacts etc. when using power conditioners. Reduce the picture to 30 inches and they're not noticeable.

Jamesw20,no advertisement. Look at my feedback and you will see a couple of cords I have used. Go to ebay and find this guy and you will clearly see we live thousands of miles away. I know the guys name is Kevin but that is about it. Also, as stated earlier Isolation transformers or even voltage converter transformers do a great job of cleaning the power without robbing detail. Not audiophile looking at all so they really need a good hiding place.

I have to give Monster their due in that they do a great job as a surge protector. I got the $199 model with "stage II" (never defined what that is) filtering and I think it made a modest improvement in the sound for the components I had. One summer day our power company sent some big surges my way and the Monster shut everything down in my system instantly. The digital readout showed 127 volts coming in. Reset was easy. It has done this one other time. So from a gear protection standpoint it works as promised. Given the converience of about 12 color coded outlets, cable, phone and ethernet connections, it's convenient as well.

When the goal is for more high end sound and the components get much better quality, then it becomes easier to hear the differences from power conditioning. I am a huge fan of Audience power conditioners and the change is dramatic in a higher end system.

IT can.

Depends on the condition of the power to start with.