I borrowed the boulder supply from a friend of mine, one of the reasons I wanted to build one myself. My supply had a much larger impact on the sound, but both are very nice pieces of gear. I was offering to build my supply to a few people for $400.
As I understand it, the ECM uses Balanced power transformers. That means rather than having 120v on the hot conductor and 0 volts to ground on the negative, you have +60 and -60, which are out of phase. In theory that cancels out common mode noise in the same way balanced analog circuitry works.
While I can't say for certain, almost ALL power conditioners that boast a "more analog" sound are using suppression capacitors and ferrite cores. Ferrite tends to work fairly well on digital gear for rolling off what people consider to be digititis. Ultimately it's a cheap trick, but has poor tradeoffs. I'm yet to find a power conditioner that can hold it's own against a Topaz Isolation Transformer with 146dB common mode noise rejection.
People may say a better mac mini power supply makes the sound more analog-sounding. I personally just think that the power supply, and more accurately the non-linearity and ripple caused by crappy power supplies is what causes a piece of gear to sound digital.
Analog is just digital that's been pressed to LP.
As I understand it, the ECM uses Balanced power transformers. That means rather than having 120v on the hot conductor and 0 volts to ground on the negative, you have +60 and -60, which are out of phase. In theory that cancels out common mode noise in the same way balanced analog circuitry works.
While I can't say for certain, almost ALL power conditioners that boast a "more analog" sound are using suppression capacitors and ferrite cores. Ferrite tends to work fairly well on digital gear for rolling off what people consider to be digititis. Ultimately it's a cheap trick, but has poor tradeoffs. I'm yet to find a power conditioner that can hold it's own against a Topaz Isolation Transformer with 146dB common mode noise rejection.
People may say a better mac mini power supply makes the sound more analog-sounding. I personally just think that the power supply, and more accurately the non-linearity and ripple caused by crappy power supplies is what causes a piece of gear to sound digital.
Analog is just digital that's been pressed to LP.