Power conditioner or not?

Power conditioning is what you have a power supply for in you amp, receivere, preamp, etc. Unless you have poorly designed equipment (and that is highly unlikely if it retails for more than $100) or live above a machine shop with large lathes operating on your same power feed, you do not need a power conditioner. A surge protector is a wise idea. If you are worried about power dropping out completely buy UPS and a generator. I spent 20 years working as an engineer with medical equipment in critical care areas and research labs - from microvolt level signal acuisition to kv x-ray equipment to life support equiptment - no one used power conditioners.

Making such general claims shows a general ignorance of audio (what the heck do x-ray machines have to do with audio?). My system has quality components with quality power supplies with filtration (MX-R, KX-R and Wadia GNSC) and all the components benefit noticeably from power conditioning and power isolation. I guess if each component was over 100K, the size of a small room and took x-rays, my system might not benefit from power conditioning...

Physics and science are not changed by the application. Audio is not rocket science.

Musicnoise, Without being offensive; you are showing your lack of experience in the realm of high-end.

Musicnoise,

The scary fact is that some audio equipment does indeed benefit. I blame it on "switched mode power supplies" in many common household items from battery chargers to computers - these can be noisy. In the past everything used to be powered with large isolation transformers but not today. I have one component that benefits and it is digital - I don't know if it was jitter or what was wrong but a power conditioner helped. I tested two conditioners and both had the same effect on only one component. Naturally I will change this component next as I suspect less than adequate power supply isolation to the electronics somewhere.

I think you are right in principle as the best designs with overbuilt good power supplies should not need power conditioning in most normal situations.