Who has dumped the power conditioner?

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

Almarg,

I really enjoy reading any of your posts. Besides your knowledge, your ability to communicate is outstanding. Thanks for the link and for the time you take to answer all of us seekers.

Al,

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, I'm one of those people who is extremely limited in technical knowledge, so I honestly don't understand much of what you wrote.

You wrote: "The effectiveness of a balanced power arrangement, such as the Equitech provides, can particularly be expected to be both system dependent and unpredictable."

When you say "unpredictable" do you mean that in a given system, a balanced power unit will be unpredictable? I'm afraid that I'm noticing this. After my initial glowing account, the next day I was hearing some glare and harshness that was almost worse than anything I had before. However, late in the evening, the sound was better than anything I had ever heard before from my system. So it seems that the quality of power going into the unit is still affecting the sound.

I'm wondering if there's anything that can be done. When it's good, it's REALLY good, but when it's bad, it's pretty bad. I know that some have suggested adding some kind of filter or power regenerator upstream from the balanced power unit. Do you have any thoughts on that idea?