Power Conditioners Recommendations

The observations about conditioning and analog sound surprise me. I assume we're talking about turntables.

How does the power to a tt affect the sound? I thought it was only used to spin the table. Is it that conditioning makes the table spin at a more constant rate normally?

I was talking about analog. I have two dedicated lines (cost about $300 for both) and Furtech outlets. Both my vintage integrated and TT go into the Brickwall.

Dedicated lines do nothing to cleanse the dirty AC coming in from the street which is the biggest distortion pertaining to AC. Everybody has dirty AC (some worse than others) and it does not matter how close or far you are from a power station.

Dedicated lines serve two purposes:

1. Minimize any interior AC noise coming from appliances and dimmer switches.

2. Help ensure that there's enough juice for dynamic/complex passages for power hungry amps.

Dedicated lines also do not cure the bi-directional digital noise generated from digital source components (cdp, dac, class D amps, computer, etc). Even with dedicated lines the digital noise will go out from the component into the wall, all the way back to the service panel, and then out to every other circuit/line, and into your other components.

If you do not have a high-current drawing amplifier you can easily forgo dedicated lines all-together provided you have proper line conditioners in place and perhaps not be lacking in anything.

Be sure that the line conditioners you select have bi-directional filtering capabilities otherwise your digital components will continue to induce sonic harm into your other components (dedicated lines or not).

-IMO

I go straight to the wall with my gear now. For sources I used to have a Hydra 4, Stealth Mini, PS Audio UO and the Premier. All but the Hydra affected dynamics. I've considered trying something else but it's not important enough for the cash outlay. I also use the Wiremold power strips which I like.

Hi Mapman, yes I was talking about LP's as well. My brother and I did the experiment, and were shocked at how much worse the conditioner made the LP's sound. We used recordings I knew to have spectacular soundstaging, and it all but disappeared with the conditioner. The conditioner also seemed to remove the ambient noise of the original recording space, greatly to the detriment of the effect. It also took much of the richness out of instrumental and vocal timbres, making the music sound much more analytical, and losing the warmth and sense of life and realism that analog usually has. We think that it may have something to do with the tube amplification, as this effect did not happen in my brother's system, and he has a solid state amp. However, there was a slight improvement for CD's with the conditioner, even with the tube amp, so we are not entirely sure of that conclusion. Anyway, in my system, the conditioner had a VERY detrimental effect on LP's.