It will do nothing! Your gear has power supplies that adequately filter the AC and produce pure DC to the circuitry.
Isolation transformer question
I know people who say they have bad power, and want to buy an isolation transformer.
When it comes to audio improvements, what will an isolation transformer do that all of the transformers in your gear aren't already doing?
(I'm not talking about "power conditioners" which include many things like filter capacitors, inductors, and so on)
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@jasonbourne71 1+ This is exactly the case with well designed, regulated power supplies. The best equipment even has multiple power supplies, one for each section or stage to keep them from interfering with each other. People would be much better off investing in better equipment than in transformers and power conditioners or regenerators. |
The above is complete nonsense. Certainly the transformers and power supplies within individual components are critically important for best performance, this goes without question. Just as those power supplies treat the power going into signal path of those components, power conditioners treat the power going to all those individual components.
Some years ago I tried a wide variety of power conditioners from Cable Co. through their lending library, including conditioners from AudioQuest, Audience, Synergistic, Shunyata, PS Audio, know I'm missing some others at the moment, also tried different parallel conditioners over the years. All these compared to the BPT 3.5 Signature I had already purchased. It wasn't that I was unhappy with BPT, just that I wanted to find a conditioner to quiet an 845 SET amp I had going into high efficiency speakers (no worse situation for noise with this combo), this without impacting transients one single iota. Not entirely successful with the transient impact issue with any of these conditioners, Audience closest. Anyway, all these conditioners made a favorable impact on my system, BPT continued as my conditioner of choice for system. Now the BPT happens to be the only transformer based conditioner amongst those I tried, take this for whatever its worth.
I'll just say this for conditioners in general, at least in my system with my AC. All contributed to lower noise floor, therefore, higher resolution/transparency. More detail heard as lower level info suddenly heard, more inner detail in that sound staging and imaging far more expansive. I've A/B'd conditioner vs. no conditioner many times over the years, with wide variety of equipment, all higher end, difference can be detected within minutes.
I\'d suggest if you took a poll, vast majority here using power conditioners, don't know the percentage using trans. based. One last thing, not all trans based conditioners created equal, the tranny used, AC receptacles, filtering caps can all make a difference. I changed out AC receptacles and filtering caps on my BPT, all for the better. BPT sadly no longer in business, one man operation, I guess became too much. |
IMO a regulator can do much more for you than a simple isolator, but the isolator can eliminate DC on the line, which is kind of rare, increase filtering due to increased inductance and make the incoming AC immune to certain types of EMI/RFI noise pick up. In various places I've lived though the automatic voltage regulator is what really kept my gear fed consistently well, whether from too low or too high a voltage. Linear amps in particular may both cause voltage sags and be subject to them. A regulator will make the incoming AC look much stiffer. |
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