Power Conditioners

Clean power is very important for good sound quality. How important depends on how noisy your electrical environment is. If you get this right then room correction/control, vibration and rfi/emf control being the other battles you need to fight. 

If you want to hear how you might benefit from a power conditioner listen to your familiar tracks then go to your consumer unit and turn off as much of the rest of your house as you dare. If you have stuff on the same ring as the music system unplug anything you can too. Now listen again. If you hear a good improvement then you can benefit from a power conditioner.

Cakyol please try this too. Modern electrics can be very noisy indeed. All those switch mode power supplies for our phones, tablets , routers, ethernet switches.... noisy. LEDs noisy especially if you have dimmable ones. This noise can be well outside of audible frequencies so may not always be measurable at the output of a DAC but this can play havoc with soundstage.

Eriks blog is a cost effective solution. I went for 2nd hand Isotek Sigmas gen 2 and DIY DC blocking power cord.  

My 20 year old Shunyata Hydra 8 was great.  Used it with Audioquest Hurricane and Tornado cords.  But, the power amp went directly to the wall.  Brought home an Audioquest 5000 and could hear no difference, no improvement.  Boy was my dealer annoyed when I brought it back. Sometime later picked up a Shunyata Denali... what a nice improvement.  Everything goes into it including the 150WPC tube power amp.  I think we all have somewhat different situations to be addressed almost by trial and error of equipment solutions.

@cakyol - I sincerely wished you were correct in the case of my particular system, that it would make no significant positive difference.
However, I cannot simply go back, it does sound better.. it just does.

And it's not just my amplifier plugged into it, everything is.

I had a quick look at the first power supply (sorry it's late and I need to hit the hay as I work tomorrow) and didn't see the technology I spoke of in it.
After the transformers I didn't see any inductors?? I didn't see the second circuit sorry.

I am sure there are some exceptional filtering circuits in high end gear, I guess mine isn't that high end and the conditioner helped?
Something like YMMV?

Many of you here use surge suppressors and conditioners to achieve some level of SQ improvement but where I live lightning is fairly common, as it is in most areas of the central and eastern US. Having one of these devices may one day save your precious equipment as it did mine one day several years ago when lightening stuck our house and destroyed the power conditioner but not the equipment plugged into it (not true for a bedroom TV however).

I borrowed a chart recorder we use at my job and monitored our voltage fluctuations during the time of some extreme heat this summer and recorded line voltage fluctuations of +/- 5 volts from 110 to 122 VAC.

I can't say I notice a SQ improvement with one in my system but it sure makes me feel a little better when a bad thunderstorm forces me to turn everything off and even unplug it and other sensitive equipment from the wall, but what if I'm not home, then my fingers are crossed. I don't have enough money to waste suing the power company, they will ultimately win.

rbach604, suggest going beyond the conditioner and also have an electrician install a home home surge suppressor at the panel. I live in a suburb of Memphis and we get lots of lightning with storms and glad I did. Twice lightning was so bad that it took one of those out  but no damage to anything else. Far cheaper , even if it has to get replaced, than replacing my power conditioner or anything else