Who has dumped the power conditioner?

Hi Adwiegert - been away for awhile, so sorry for the delayed response. The Monster unit is what I purchased originally, as in my area we have severe thunder and lightning storms, so a surge protector is absolutely essential to protect the equipment. I chose this particular unit as it has no adverse effect on the sound quality- no different from plugging into the wall directly. It also has the beneficial effect of removing the RF noise, though I always turn off all lights, fans, etc. when listening anyway.

The power conditioners I have tried, on the other hand, have had very negative effects on the sound, as I have described before in other threads and won't repeat again here. One was a PS Audio product, the Quintet, I believe, that my brother owns, and in his area it does make a beneficial difference (he has solid state amplification, however). I have also tried another that a friend brought over, and it was even worse, I forget which one it was, exactly, I think one of the Furman ones. He didn't end up keeping it, either. Perhaps I am lucky to have good power in my area, or perhaps power conditioners just don't go very well with tube amplifiers and/or analog playback, things I have read many others assert here in these forums, and, judging from my own experiences and those of others I know, I have no reason to disagree. I'm not saying it couldn't work, just that it hasn't ever for me, and the effects were so negative that I don't feel the need to experiment with it any further.

Prior to today, my last experience with a power conditioner was about twenty years ago. Its dramatically bad impact on the sound of my system turned me off to the very idea for all this time.

I installed dedicated lines to my room with high quality outlets a couple of years ago, which improved the sound, but there was simply no getting around the fact that my system consistently and dramatically sounded better in the late evenings, Sunday evenings in particular. This led me to conclude that poor power quality was robbing me of the full potential of my system.

After doing some research and speaking with the manufacturer of my speakers and distributer of my amp (Bobby P. of Merlin Music, distributer of ARS-Sonum Filarmonia), I decided to buy a used Equitech 2Q. It arrived tonight.

I'm shouting this from the rooftops: This is not a subtle improvement! Every aspect of sound reproduction has been positively and significantly impacted. Much blacker background, lots more low-level detail, bigger soundstage, more dynamic, more relaxed, more natural, more authority.

I live in Portland, OR, so have all the inherent power problems associated with being in a city. It's hard to say how much improvement someone else would get, but I couldn't be happier. This is possibly the most cost-effective upgrade I've done in 30 years. It wasn't cheap, but it was significantly cheaper than upgrading my speaker cables, for example.

Equitech 2Q Power Conditioner > Mac Mini > Altmann DAC > Cardas GR IC's > ARS-Sonum Filarmonia > Audience AU24e > Merlin VSM-MMe's

Turboglo, the adage that everything is system dependent certainly applies here. Several years ago I bought an Equi=tech 1.5Q and did everything including several conversations with people at Equitech about it. It was absolutely the worst filter I ever heard, but the guy who bought it from me loves it. Balance power, I thought, made a lot of sense until I experienced it.

Tbg,

I totally agree that so much is dependent on synergy and integration of components. For example, I've had speakers in my room that have been absolutely raved about, but sounded REALLY BAD in my room with my electronics, no matter how I set them up.

Unfortunately, trial and error is often the only way for us to figure out what works best in our particular situation. This is why I went with the recommendation of the designer of my speakers. He hasn't steered me wrong yet in these matters.

best,
Glenn

The effectiveness of a balanced power arrangement, such as the Equitech provides, can particularly be expected to be both system dependent and unpredictable. That is because its effectiveness depends on the happenstance of how equal the parasitic (and perhaps designed in) capacitances between ac hot and chassis are, relative to the corresponding capacitances between ac neutral and chassis, for each piece of equipment that the balanced power is supplied to.

See the second paragraph on page 2 of this paper, and also look at page 1 to see what is being referred to:

http://www.jensen-transformers.com/an/an004.pdf

Another reason for system dependency is that in an audio system with balanced signal interfaces between components, ac-related inter-chassis currents do not flow in common with signal return currents (as they do with unbalanced interconnects), and so at least some of the problems that might be helped by balanced power are avoided in the first place.

Regards,
-- Al