First power conditioner I ever tried was Running Springs Hayley 15 years ago and I’ve used them ever since. I connected 2 McCormack dna rev a mono blocks, pre and sources and I had never heard what air around each instrument in the soundstage was all about until that day.
Since then I bought the RUnning Springs Dmitri which resulted in a bigger improvement. I have only used passive conditioners and results were very noticeable. I did buy a Furman 15i for a home theater and tried for the hell of it in my main system with amp in conditioner and then wall, source and pre in conditioner and it sucked the life out the music. |
phillyby- I have tried many, and good ones, sold them all. The only one I held on to is a PS Audio P-12 Regenerator for my front-end gear and it does what they say it does. My amp is always into the wall no matter what I was using. The PS can clean up the incoming and output a pefect clean wave form, and as importantly keep the voltage steady at 120V. The days when folks claimed their system sounded better on some days or at nights or weekends, the thought was more noise, well it is also the line voltage changing up and down.
To test this I raised the out voltage of my PS audio unit from steady120V to 121, 122, 123, and with each step raised the sound became less detailed with fat bloated bass, and by 123 volts the dark heavy sound was backlike days gone by in the past, then I lowered it to 119V, 118, 117 volts and the sound became thinner and clinical sounding, same as some days in the past.
This was an education for me, and from that now if a conditioner of any kind cannot regulate the voltage to a steady 120, then I would look for a unit that would. Going back to my front end with out PS unit, sounded OK, but then later on the day it sounded totaly different, I check the out going wall voltage and the reading was up to 123.9 volts and it sounded that was, even a dictated line will not solve a major issue that impacts all systems, day or night. My wall outlet is rarely at 120V, most days 122V and others 119V, highest has been 124V and lowest 118V. When AC line voltage coming in the wall varies this is a natural result of voltage draw on a vast complex electrical grid. This is nothing like what happens when you change the voltage on your regenerator. The two are completely different, and in ways that have a huge impact on your comparison. Power in watts is volts times amps. W=VA. You cannot create watts from nothing. The power delivered is the power delivered. You can increase volts only by decreasing amps. So even though your panel and wire may support more amps you have limited it by increasing voltage. So of course it sounds worse. But if you decrease voltage then again you have a problem only now it is that you are trying to draw more amps from the circuit. So it sounds worse this way too. There is no free lunch. You are screwed either way. I never have measured voltage at night. It sounds better then, but not because of voltage. |
Paul, the Furman reference series (as well as some of the similar Audioquest Niagara’s ) stores energy to deliver more current than available from the wall for short times for increased transient response. I was putting together a small system with a Hegel H190 and bought a used Furman Reference 15. It does store some energy, though not nearly as much as my Niagara 7000 in my main system , but the very old Furman did help most aspects of the Hegel integrated. Cleaner power can sound less exciting or lower in volume, but adding back some gain fixes it and reveals a more precise presentation with added micro and macro dynamics. |
Emailists, I used the elite 15i not the reference 15 series. I demoed a reference 7 in my home, I believe that’s what is was, it had a silver face plate. I thought it was a nice conditioner and improved the music. It was the cheapest in the reference line if memory serves me right. I’ve always run dedicated lines so that may help too. I don’t even want to get into rhodium outlets discussion but those were a big step up also. |
Power in watts is volts times amps. W=VA. This is only true if there are no phase differences between the current and voltage. If there is a phase angle involved (inductive load) things might be quite different. |
