A couple of years ago, I bought a pair of Electraclears from ADD-Powr, an audio products company. They’re plugged into the same hospital grade outlet that my system uses and has improved the overall sound quality of the system, described in a post I wrote called Game Changing Tweak in August 2020. Since then I upgraded my system with a Plinius SA-102 amp and Plinius M-16 pre-amp that was bought from and brilliantly modified by Plinius Repair in California. The amp delivers 120wpc of pure Class A by flicking a toggle, and though it’s all solid state, it has the supple sonics of a fine tube amp. I live in a rural area where the electric grid can be a bit gritty. An audiophile friend recommended that I get an isolation transformer to clean up any noise infiltrating from the power lines. I bought a new Tripp Lite from an eBay site for less than half of what the same unit was selling for elsewhere, and was impressed with the immediate improvement in clarity and coherence from the addition. Every component in the system is plugged into the power filter, a Chang Lightspeed Powerline 6400, which is now plugged into the isolation transformer. I haven’t detected a loss of detail with this configuration in any way. I listened to the system for several weeks before remembering my Electraclears were still in the outlet that the isolation transformer was plugged into. I had to consider that the isolation transformer may be negating the effect of the Electraclears, so I pulled them from the outlet they were sharing with the transformer and plugged them directly into two of the transformer’s four outlets. The improvement was incredible. The transformer lowers the overall noise floor, and the Electraclears expand the musicality. If you happen to already own these Electraclears, then an isolation transformer would be a worthwhile acquisition.This is a synergistic coupling that I fortunately discovered by acting on a hunch.
