Why does better power = better sound?

Hi Raks - Wow, an Audience aR6-TS. I'm envious. Just looking at that thing makes me drool.

I'd love to attend a shootout of top power conditioners like Audience, Shunyata, Synergistic Research, Tripoint, etc.. People have great things to say about all of them. What would make it even more interesting is if you could selectively control the quality of the power going to the conditioner. Ahh... It's a nice day dream. Anyway...

To me its like a white dress shirt. Its either clean or it is not. There is at point at which it technically might be considered cleaner if say inspected under a microscope maybe, but practically, it is clean.

I think there's some truth to this, Mapman. But it's worth mentioning that I've been surprised MANY times with the benefits of improving the quality of power reaching my system. What surprised me the most were improvements to things like instrument timbre. For a long time I thought of noise as being synonymous with the NOISE FLOOR. Because the noise floor of my system was already low, I concluded that I wouldn't benefit much from improving the quality of the power to the system. Boy was I wrong.

Recently I went on a mission to reduce RFI/EMI in my system, which included things like installing croy'd 10 gauge Romex for my dedicated line, trying yet another fancy outlet (my 4th), dressing cables with zip ties with obsessive compulsive attention to detail, and adding ferrites to EVERYTHING in the house that pollutes the power lines (and that's just a few of the things I did). The effects went far beyond simply reducing the noise floor. Everything improved: dynamics, coherence, harmonic accuracy, imaging.

You're probably already aware of most or all of that. But for me it was a real eye opener. No, an ear opener. :-)

Bryon

Oh yeah, and yesterday I measured the voltage of various AC lines around the house. They ranged from 118.3V to 121.2V and fluctuated significantly. But...

The dedicated line feeding the system: 120.0V

It was dead on. And there was no fluctuation beyond .1V (within the +/- of the meter) during the 60 seconds I measured it. A little confirmation that my efforts to improve power around here are paying off.

Bryon

"I'd love to attend a shootout of top power conditioners like Audience, Shunyata, Synergistic Research, Tripoint, etc.."

Yes, me too.

Ideally this would occur in my room and with my power.

I'd settle for a/b testing of any of these with my setup compared to what I currently use. I would expect to hear a difference and be able to make a value judgement accordingly.

A shootout elsewhere would still be interesting but harder for me to translate.

My goal would be to use a power conditioner to put the power issue to rest for me for good hopefully. That might well prove to be a good investment even if somewhat pricey!

Maybe if I had $30 or so left in my pocket afterwards I just might, MIGHT, consider a fancy fuse! But probably not. :-)

If someone in Baltimore/DC metro area wanted to play, I might be interested in a reciprocal trial of some of my more easily transported gear in their place as well sometime.

I was a skeptic. Moved up from a Shunyata to an Audience AR12 and was surprised at how much energy and dynamics and nuance came through. Much bigger difference than simple power cord or dedicated outlet upgrade (which also helps). I just bought the new Audience AR12-TSS. AMAZING.....it was like an immediate upgrade occurred on every component in my system, and that was after being used to the stock AR12 which was pretty special and beat other PLCs I had in my system....couldn't live without it (well OK I could live without it but wouldn't be as happy). Those folks at Audience have cracked the code I believe, and I'm a believer in power conditioning for sure, including plugging my amp (tube or solid state) into the AR12-TSS!

Byroncunningham... I've followed your journey with great interest.

Mapman... I fully understand what you mean about "pulling the trigger". For me it was a hard decision to buy the aR6-TS versus buying a better 2 channel amp to replace my 5 channel Theta Intrepid Amp. In this case, I made the right choice.