Who has dumped the power conditioner?

Follow up:

I just wanted to update my situation. After consulting with some trusted experts, I decided to try replacing the stock power cord that came with the Equitech. It was suggested that the small copper conductors in the beldon pc were resonating with more voltage draw. I was pointed toward something with a solid core, so I ordered a JPS Labs Power AC+. This has totally fixed the problem and further opened up the soundstage. It's kind of annoying that I'd have to spend an additional $400 for an expensive power conditioner to be listenable. But, oh well. I'm thrilled with the way things are sounding.

Al, I am considering a couple of power isolation transformer based products. One takes non balanced in and outputs balanced power, or so I believe. That's the equi=tech. The other is a Torus power isolation unit and since I don't have balanced AC in the house and won't be adding in via dedicated lines, I won't get the balanced in version, just the non balanced in.

Would you say that the equi=tech would not really be impacted by the balanced power issues you mentioned because it is not actually connected to 240V balanced in power?

Bryan

Al, I had a look at the paper and it looks to me that the author believes that balanced AC power will only reduce hum under a specific and rare condition -- in a system with three chassis that have the same capacitance. But most of the article content regarding "balanced vrs unbalanced" pertains to interconnects and signal, not power. I don't really see much here that is related to balanced power causing inconsistencies in results in different systems. Unless I just missed it.

Hi Bryan,

You didn't miss reading what I was referring to, but my interpretation of it was different. He is saying that what will only occur under a rare combination of circumstances is COMPLETE cancellation of ac-related inter-chassis currents (which can cause high frequency buzz and grunge, and backgrounds which are less "black," in addition to causing low frequency hum). However, SOME improvement may still occur in many cases, to a degree that will vary depending on the relationships between the stray capacitances that are present in each of the interconnected components.

So what I was saying was that since the relationships between those stray capacitances will be essentially random, the degree of reduction of hum, buzz, and grunge provided by a balanced power arrangement will be unpredictable.

Regards,
-- Al