Power conditioners and power regeneration

Having read all the reviews I can, have ordered a Puritan PSM156.

Suits all my needs.

After reading everything, I’m still a little confused. How can you safely daisy chain a ups with a power conditioner? 

After reading everything, I’m still a little confused. How can you safely daisy chain a ups with a power conditioner?

Sorry, if you are referring to my example I’m not using a UPS with a power conditioner. I’m using a voltage regulator with power conditioners. The VR uses a switched transformer, and therefore has no high frequency harmonics. The VR does not offer perfect 120 Volts, but rather a range between 118 and 123 VAC. After this I use surge protectors which use primarily series mode protection so even if they should activate they won’t short.

A UPS has a built-in battery. A VR does not and won’t supply power when the power is out or bellow a certain range, say 100VAC. A UPS will engage when the output is out of the correct range, and that output, often intended for PCs, may be quite noisy. They do make sine wave UPS’s, but the noise is still there and based on reviews they tend to be much less reliable than their noisy brethren.

All the UPS vendors I am familiar with have built in surge protection, of various levels of quality.

The one case when you might have to use both, when you need surge protected outlets, and a UPS for other outlets, you should put the surge protector first, UPS second.

The biggest fire danger is daisy-chaining cheap extension cords without fuses/breakers. That’s where your average home dweller or even office worker gets into trouble.

An outlet may provide 1800 W and those cheap extension cords, intended for lamps, may burn out after 600W. Try to daisy chain a few PC’s, printers, and a coffee machine and boom, fire.

Surge protectors want to be as close to the outlet as possible so that if they activate by shorting they dump as much current as possible through the home wiring. Any mediocre connections in between limit their effectiveness.

In addition, parallel mode surge protectors may short upstream components like other surge protectors, so having more than one surge protector in a chain is bad.

I get around all of this by:

• Using a voltage regulator that does not produce harmonics or noise and has a breaker
• Using Furman conditioners which have series mode (SMP) surge protection, and breakers
• Using hospital grade plug on the wall
• NOT using a UPS or regenerator

But like I mentioned, my gear was built up incrementally. If I had to do it again I'd have gone with the Furman with both voltage regulation AND power conditioning in one package.  

Been at this hobby for a long time trying all kinds of "improvements".  Other than protection from power surges, never thought much about power conditioning.  After all, each piece of gear powered by AC includes filtering to clean up the AC.  

Why did my system sound different in the daytime, evening, or day of the week?  It took a long time to be confident there really was a difference.  AC varied some, but surely a couple volts can't be the issue. 

Found a nice used PS Audio Power Regenerator to try.  Connected all my gear to the unit and picked a track with a piano passage harshness present every time.  Whoa - clear notes, no harsh edges.  Tried another track with some harsh edges.  Gone again, nothing but clean and clear notes.  Tried several more tracks. Same result.  Would not describe as jaw dropping difference, but no doubt harsh edges gone.  That was with solid state amp over several weeks.  During that period, time of day made no difference in the sound quality.

Switched to my tube amp. Spent a few weeks listening.  Again, no difference based on time of day.  Prior to the Power Regenerator the solid state amp and tube amp both sounded good, with not much difference.  After, the change in sound quality with the tube amp is substantial.  There is depth, body, and clarity not present previously.

As always, be your own judge of whether a different piece of gear or tweak works for you.