The best power conditioner for less than $1K?

I agree with Tweakmenow. Everybody has dirty AC to one bad degree or another. Installing PROPER line conditioning is absolutely foundational to any system.

In fact, once you've become accustomed to listening with excellent line conditioners you soon find out just how difficult it is to listen to any system for more than 5 or 10 minutes without proper line conditioning.

Moreover, with proper line conditioning, you also discover just how much sonic harm some line conditioners induce in your system. Not to mention that without proper line conditioning you will never know your component's and system's true capabilities with this foundational piece missing.

With that said, I've been using the Foundation Research passive and dedicated and bi-directional filtering line conditioners for the last 5 years. Late last year I became a dealer and in so doing, I also became a dealer for the top flight Foundation Research product line.

-IMO

I have been using the PS Audio Power Plants P600 and P1200 for the past 3-4 years and don't like my audio or video as well without them. The room treatment is very important first though to balance everything out and the power plants are icing on the cake. Remember that some conditioners actually restrict components and protect very little. If you want some good Q&A on power issues, log onto www.psaudio.com and check out their approach.

Sometimes, I think we lose sight of the goals of the person who posted the question. No one here is disputing the benefits of power conditioning. What Sempaul specifically said was:

I would really like to get a more analog warm 2 ch sound. Any recommednations on what power conditioner would help?

I do not believe any amount of power conditioning is suddenly going to result in a more analog warm 2 channel sound. The source of that sound will be found elsewhere. Nevertheless, when the warm, analog sound is achieved, power conditioning will enhance it further.

IMO...as a user of Shunyata Hydra products, and as a past user of Sound Applications, PS Audio, Quantum Symphony, Bybee, and BPT power conditioners.

I would still want my electric to be as good as I could achieve before I started with room treatments. I would put your source on a dedicated line with an Audio Magic Mini Digital and listen. I have used the Hydra, but prefer the AM line. Sound Application, even used, is out of your budget. Room treatments? Maybe, but I would prefer to have electric nirvana before I started going that route...IMHO...

To answer this thread's primary question, what is the best PLC under $1k? For a passive filtering device, if the lower-priced Audio Magic Stealth is anything like the Eclipse model I run with, this could very well be the ticket to entry level PLC greatness. A friend has the Hydra8 and swears by it so the Hydra4 would be my other choice to consider. The PS Audio regenerating units may be worthy of audition, but these generate heat and so I prefer to stay with the passive filtering devices.

The above issue could dramatically change the clarity and resolution of the system. You may very well hear more silence between the notes. Sounds will be as if they are the results of musicians and not just sounds. But a PLC is not going to do much to bring on "warmth" or simulate an analog-like presentation. If you're after analog "qualities" like portrayal of space, long decays, harmonic textures especially in the mids, no PLC nor room treatments are the answer here. In the context of your system's components, this is simply not going to happen.

Room treatments are not likely to bring on "warmth" either. When I added ASC tube traps around the room, they brought on even greater clarity to the mids and highs. But this was not so much a tonality change in the mids that is often associated with the term, warmth. The ASC's removed a fatiguing edge that was very evident when I took them back out of the room. And the result here made for more greater decays and ambience because of the clarity.

You want warmth....you need one of a handful of tube preamps out there. It is not likely going to happen any other way. You want analog sound from CD playback, you're looking at a top-notch tube DAC.

John