Power/Line conditioner

Eight months ago I purchased a Monster Cable HTS 5000 originally for our emerging home theater system. Since the HT system was "under construction" at that point in time I placed the HTS 5000 into the chain of our high end system in the living room. At first, I was stunned at the sonic benefits the HTS 5000 brought to the music! However, after a few weeks of listening to it in the chain I noticed a slight loss of dynamics in some source material. Pretty soon afterwards this really started to bug me as I found myself focusing on dynamics and not enjoying the music. Taking the amps off of the HTS 5000 cured this problem. The HTS 5000 is still in the stereo system and has never made it's way into the home theater set up. It's a great piece for the front end. -Jerie

I should mention something else as to why results may differ with these devices. I was using a Musical Fidelity X-A1 amp at the time of my tests. The amp has an external power supply that I found out by accident holds a great deal of current, IMO, in reserve. I once accidently pulled the plug to the power supply when the system was playing and it maintained a rather high volume for approx. 10-15 seconds before dying out. This may be why the dynamics in this setup were not changed too much by the addition of the power conditioner. I am now in a position to retry this with a different amp (an Audion Silver Night) that has one of the smallest/lightest power supplies that I have ever seen. It is of some type of design that I am not familiar with. I recently upgraded two outlets on different lines (one of which I can try the amp, the Audion this time, straight into the wall. I will try this in a couple of weeks when the wiring settles down (I pulled additional cable from the wall and both outlets sound a little "funny" right now). I just did the work yesterday. I also received the APC condtioner (mentioned above) yesterday as well and hooked it up to the computer for starters. It has an alarm that goes off when the power drops and I have already experienced 3 Brown outs in the past hour. Not a good thing power wise to be living in CA at this time. I will try the APC on the stereo in a couple of weeks as well.

Well, I could not wait and tried the Audion amp (last night) direct into the wall on a different (but not dedicated) line than the front end components and the Monster are running from. The dynamics were definately increased on the low wattage amplifier. The overall sound is still a little raspy as I think that the new connections need to settle in (I hope that this is the case). But the dynamics have definately increased with this setup on this particular amp. If it smooths out in a couple of weeks I will have a winning combination. I am currently running the Musical Fidelity amp in another room and the sound is not as good as it was through the Monster, I will probably try it through the APC conditioner when I feel like crawling around on the floor again:-)

Forget them all, go with dedicated lines. I've had the gammet of "conditioners" (excepting the kilo$ PS audio). Some improvement, but not worth the cash. I had the good fortune to have a 400amp main in my house. I had my electrician put in 4 40amp breakers ( though fuses are supposed to be better, but ultimately less convenient). Then I just went ahead and had two runs of 10ga. for each line to some modified hospital outlets ala. Sergui at interlinkhouse.com. Also used his 10ga. silver plated ofc for the star ground configuration. Results...incredibly clean, fast power. The whole thing cost way less than the PS device. Only concern I have is what happens when lightning strikes!!?? Anyone have the answer to this? BTW Redkiwi has written a bunch of feedback on using a dedicated line/ground system in the past. Look up his stuff in the archives if you wish to pursue this option further. The only place I see for these conditioners is if doing such a modification to your homes' wiring is out of the question i.e. apartments etc. Enjoy the obsession!

Regarding brown outs. I doubt the system I put in would help you much.