Power Conditioning on the Cheap

@pesky_wabbit 

despite claims of elaborate filtration all they contained was a varistor and a capacitor

Not surprised, a lot of products consist of normal stuff in a fancy box.  After you install your dedicated lines, if you want to spend just a little money for protection and filtration, check out the Jon Risch ac filter described here and here.  I made two of them years ago and they continue to work great.  Take Five Audio in Canada used to offer a kit for this.  Unfortunately, I could no longer find the original links but you might ask around on audio asylum.

Underwood HIFi has a line of lower cost power conditioners and offers a trial period.

I am personally a fan of the Garth Powell units (Furman and Audioquest) that have storage in the unit for more power than the line can deliver for transients.
While I use the Niagara 7000 in home system to great effect, I needed to put together another much cheaper system and found a very old Furman reference 15 for sale. It’s pretty much the same as the current reference 15i units sold now except for cosmetics.

I just noticed a Furman reference 20 on flea bay for 800 obo.  I would imagine it would blow away even an Niagara 1200.  

Brick Wall offers a couple of power conditioners/protection. I can’t say about the improvement in sound, because I am just using one for my computer.

To my liking are the old BPT power isolation transformers, which were rated high over the need for current in many systems. The one that I bought many years ago had 6 secondary windings electrostatic shields for each winding, and also produced balanced power in the output. Each secondary is rated at 10 amps, but the primary is also rated for 10 amps, so that must be taken into consideration.

Got to admit to using Richard Gray products in the past but think that more than one needs to be considered.

A close second in my experience is an old PS Audio P300. I have one coming in Wednesday that has been thoroughly rebuilt by a good friend of mine who used to consult for Sudgen in Europe. I consider the extra money spent on the rebuild rather worth it. I have owned these units (the P300 in particular) like what they do given their limitations. Almost always used for source equipment.

I also agree with @mitch2.

And that a dedicated ground can't be overlooked, if available.

Objective? Here you go, from Audio Science Review, a deep look into power regenerators. 
 

Personally? I just use a nice TL line conditioner that has a protection circuit built in.

@mitch2 yeah, when you know what’s actually in the box you have to giggle

varistors change sound in a way some may find appealing, but squash dynamics big time. The outlets are very high quality and probably do offset their impact to a certain extent, but I would remove them in a heartbeat..