[roscoeiii]

I think that most of the claims of "limited dynamics" have more to do with the amplifier than the receptacle that they're plugged into. Pass Labs is one good example of that. Most of his amplifiers have trouble driving a realistic load in the first place.

Unless I am missing your point, isn't this a pretty easy A/B comparison? Amp to the wall vs amp to the conditioner. Compare/contrast.

[Quiet Earth]

Yes, but if the amp is struggling already, why blame the power conditioner?

[roscoeiii]

Yes, but if the amp is struggling already, why blame the power conditioner?

Not entirely clear on your point here. I suppose that I'd blame the power conditioner for preventing the amp from getting maximum possible dynamics (or whatever was limited). Because even if it is struggling, the amp might be struggling less plugged into the wall. If you want to keep the amp and can find a power conditioner that improves the sound & doesn't cause it to struggle more then you have a winner for that particular amp.

Auditions and return policies are your friends for power conditioning.

[Quiet Earth]

My point is that many people already have an amplifier that is insufficient for the system they have created, and so by cleaning up the system with a conditioner it only highlights the problem of limited dynamics.

I think some people expect too much magic from a power conditioner.

[werd]

My point is that many people already have an amplifier that is insufficient for the system they have created, and so by cleaning up the system with a conditioner it only highlights the problem of limited dynamics.

I think some people expect too much magic from a power conditioner.

I am not sure i agree with this. I get what you are saying though. If the amp isn't up to snuff feeding decent power isn't going to help.

You don't really know though until you do feed it good power who the culprit is. My personal conclusions are that overkill power feed into your entire system is unappreciated. I think the best kept secret in hi fi is 20 amps preferably in a 240 config. In fact i think the entire work around in amp design is dealing with 120 15 amp service and how to get good dynamic power feed. We see big huge transformers feeding massive farad storage. All this points to bandaid design relating to power issues from the wall IMHO. So if you can get a very fast reliable power feed from your wall then it reduces the strain of your amps. This is all IMHO btw.

I think all amps will benefit from over kill including SET output. You want that fast 50 amp spikes in dynamic push to be un-impeded. Wall power can't put that out so its needs to be treated to maintain dynamics into a working power feeds. Especially into power hungry speakers....

Thats how i hear it anyways.... ymmv

[cheap-Jack]

Hi.

(1) Can someone explain in layman's terms how an 1800 watt power conditioner would limit the current (and I assume "dynamics") to a system that draws only 3 or 4 hundred watts? How about 6 hundred?

(2) Can someone explain in laymen's terms how a parallel power conditioner would do the same for any system?

(1) It is not power handling capacity that matters. It is the design of the conditioner itself. Many many power conditioners employed tons of active devices IN SERIES to do the active filtering. Such active filtering networks look gorgeous on blue prints, but so often fail to react spontaneously to load changes. Good ears can detect such pitfalls in term of compression & restricted dynamics.

This is inadequate designs. Too complex electronics can cause such problem if not done right. My picky ears can detect it.

Simply take the power conidtioner out & hear any change in the music. It's that simple.

FYI, what I've installed in my 125V & 250V dedicated powerlines for many years are simple basic linear inline RFI filters, made in England, with insertion loss of 52dB at 32MHz. They work without affect a bit of the music & are very affordable.

I don't need any costly & bulky so called "conditioners".

(2) Do you mean 2 conditioners connected in parallel to power same one load ?

c-J

[werd]

Make mine (cheap) red wine!

I missed your earlier response (and werd's) in this fast running topic....welcome back from Munich (I was in Cologne last month - first time - good town)

I misspoke earlier - I do use an active conditioner that I found to only help matters without grain or etch added - the Adept Response product (I use the AR1p powering the whole outlet strip that everything but my digital gear gets plugged into).  On the strip I use a ENACOM filter, too, and a PS Audio Noise Harvester in an adjacent outlet (it's a very small, nuanced difference I hear with it, but when removed I enjoy the music a bit less - even if I still can't determine what it's doing)

3+ years ago I had a LOT more time in my life to monkey around with my system, so each and every piece of power conditioning was tested here.  I work all day in my home office and that's where my system is...so if there is etch added it will grate on me pretty fast while in here 8-10 hours daily.

What I meant earlier is that I have yet to find a transformer-based noise 'conditioner' that was a net positive for anything but digital gear.  As mentioned, on the digital side, I use a small isolation transformer that is likely most effective at being a wastegate for digital pollutants getting tossed back into the system than anything else.  I'm not at all certain that it makes the juice going to the digital side 'better' so much as restrict digital artifacts back in.  Nonetheless, it's a pretty substantial net gain in better sonics going that way.

It does make me wonder how close the transformer feeding the electical service into your house will make a difference?. Having a transformer fitted conditioner powering your hifi might be more beneficial if the neighborhood service transfomer is hundreds of feet away. Compared to a guy living next door to it.

[cheap-Jack]

Hi.

It does make me wonder how close the transformer feeding the electical service into your house will make a difference?. Having a transformer fitted conditioner powering your hifi might be more beneficial if the neighborhood service transfomer is hundreds of feet away. Compared to a guy living next door to it.

Yes, the powerline isolation transformer can affect the music.

Here was my sad experience many years back. I had a 1KVA isolation powerline iron custom-built heavy duty like a tank, statically shielded, housed in a large steel case with a large O/P volt meter at the front panel. It was built by a well known transformer building workshop for some good money.

So I installed it in my 125V dedicated powerline. It was used to power my 35W+35W tube power amp & tube preamp of total max power consumption not over 200W.  Only 20% of the 1KVA powerline iron rating!

The outcome was very disappointing. It slowed down the music which sounded grainy & punchless. Totally unacceptable.

So I took it out & the originally fast & dynamic music came right back.

Now it is seated idling in my store room for good.

c-J

PS: I don't mind sell it to whoever needs an isolation transformer.

[OzarkTom]

I think that most of the claims of "limited dynamics" have more to do with the amplifier than the receptacle that they're plugged into. Pass Labs is one good example of that. Most of his amplifiers have trouble driving a realistic load in the first place.

The limited dynamics comes from plugging the amp into the conditioner. Plug the amp straight into the wall and the dynamics comes back.

Barry(NJ) just wrote a similar problem that he had with the Ncores. The wall was better.

[Quiet Earth]

I get what you are saying though. If the amp isn't up to snuff feeding decent power isn't going to help.

Thanks werd, yes, that is mostly what I was getting at. That, or the possibility that someone may have chosen the wrong amp for his speaker, or he doesn't have enough AC wall current for his amp in the first place. (Not sure why you would buy an amp like that, but I get it.  )

We see big huge transformers feeding massive farad storage. All this points to bandaid design relating to power issues from the wall IMHO. So if you can get a very fast reliable power feed from your wall then it reduces the strain of your amps.

I think you are mostly describing a solid state power amp, but even so, how fast does a 60 cycle sine wave need to be for the amp to work correctly? If the power supply is made properly you should be able to feed it the appropriate steady AC current and let it do its job. Where does 60 Hz speed come in to play? If this could be explained then maybe we can get a better handle on why power conditioners "limit dynamics".

I think all amps will benefit from over kill including SET output. You want that fast 50 amp spikes in dynamic push to be un-impeded.

I don't think I would ever want 50 amp spikes entering my SET. Or coming out of them.....  .  Remember that power is the product of current and voltage. This is where the solid state guys are at a severe disadvantage IMHO. All that current created and no voltage to tell it what to do.

IMO, YMMV, and other just sayin' acronyms.

[Quiet Earth]

(1) It is not power handling capacity that matters. It is the design of the conditioner itself. Many many power conditioners employed tons of active devices IN SERIES to do the active filtering. Such active filtering networks look gorgeous on blue prints, but so often fail to react spontaneously to load changes. Good ears can detect such pitfalls in term of compression & restricted dynamics.

Can you list a few of these conditioners that operate this way? It might be helpful to specify which models to avoid. You can limit your list to conditioners targeted at the audio market.

 

FYI, what I've installed in my 125V & 250V dedicated powerlines for many years are simple basic linear inline RFI filters, made in England, with insertion loss of 52dB at 32MHz. They work without affect a bit of the music & are very affordable.

"Inline", isn't that the same as in series? If not, please explain the difference.

(2) Do you mean 2 conditioners connected in parallel to power same one load ?

Parallel filtering is where the cleaning or "conditioning" action is in parallel with the hot line, not in series with it. At least that is the way that I understand it. Do I have that wrong too?

[cheap-Jack]

Hi.

(1) Can you list a few of these conditioners that operate this way?
(2) "Inline", isn't that the same as in series? If not, please explain the difference.
(3) Parallel filtering is where the cleaning or "conditioning" action is in parallel with the hot line, not in series with it. At least that is the way that I understand it. Do I have that wrong too?

(1) Sorry. I can't suggest any. May I suggest you to mail those conditioners'
manufacturers to find out
I don't need or want any those brandnames gear as I've got what I am musically happy with :- simple PASSIVE linear inline filters which do not affect my music & are very affordable.

They are installed in each of my 3 dedicated powerlines:-

(1) 125V60Hz for digital gear only, e.g. CD/DVD players
(2) 125V60Hz for analogue gear only, e.g. phono-preamps,tube power amp
(3) 250V60Hz for analogue gear only, e.g. my tape deck, TT, & my SS power amp, all 110/220V operable, set to 220V.

(2) Yes, "inline" can also mean "in series". But these filters use only caps, resistors & comon mode inductors - ALL passive . So they don't kill the music - my very very bottom line.

(3) Please explain how you can parallal a conditioner "with the hot line"? I don't get it.

c-J

[Quiet Earth]

I don't get it.

Don't worry about it then. Thanks anyway.

[coxhaus]

I think for power isolation to work you need to be big enough. I started with 2 3kVA power isolators one on each amp and a 600VA isolator for the preamp and the digital. I had to switch out the 600VA isolator with a bigger one. I added a 5kVA isolator split with one side being analog and the other side being for digital. The isolators are all being fed by 30 amp 220volt breakers.
After the switch the music relaxed with better dynamics and much better bass.

[Folsom]

Limited dynamics from under current is a reality.

The mechanical nature of isolation transformers is real. It appears having one that is very oversized for the application limits the issues. The best reports I've read on ones people didn't dislike the sound from comes from a couple factors, type of amplifiers that have different type of draw needs, and the size proportion to the equipment.

If you put a 30a isolation transformer for a system that maybe pulls 10a during play peaks, you probably won't notice as much of a shift in dynamics. Now place a 10a transformer in you might, especially with say a class A amplifier.

This doesn't mean I recommend transformers (there are more reasons why I don't like them). But the same concept exists within your average day power-cords, terminal strips, etc. For example while 14ga wire might work well enough for a lot of equipment, it sounds better with 12ga... Equipment with more compression or soldered sound better than cheap equipment without as good of connections (some people solder everything in their chain together).

If you build/buy a conditioner that exceeds the amount of current you usually need for whatever socket you plug into, and there are no overtly large resistive series factors (or mechanical), you won't have to worry. For example Audience Adept and myself use mode chokes that exceed the current draw needs for equipment and you can't find a report in existence of a loss in dynamics by them then use correctly. They are very low resistance, and exceed peak current draw when using how I recommend (or always in AA's case because they use lower filtration units on all sockets that are high ampere). It's pretty simple and it works.

There are other factors that contribute to an even better sounding conditioner. But in general if you don't start with allowing the correct current amounts, you aren't starting out right at all! (despite the crudeness of a power conditioner, the details are pretty important)

The topic at hand, do you need power conditioning? Well no, no one need it but... If you actually want to listen to your stereo as opposed to talk about how good it is at certain attributes, you are going to want one. I get more out of a cheap stereo with power conditioning, emotionally and habitual patterns of listening, than I do out of an expensive stereo without. I can listen to a $50k stereo and think it sounds cool, but it's easy to just leave it at that and go do other stuff, but when a stereo has conditioning then the emotional gratification I get from listening keeps me coming back to it. Yes I can get similar results from alcohol with music, but I don't think being sober should hold a person back from getting a much more gratifying experience from music.

Good gear gives you good specs (including stuff like imaging etc), but good power conditioning gives you an emotional connection to the music. Neither one is right or wrong, just different. But I'd beg to say that the concepts of what can change with power conditioning is such a new concept to the ear that it's going to be called voodoo snake oil for awhile. People usually think I'm talking about snake oil when I describe the experience of what conditioning offer, but after they hear it for awhile everything becomes clear. I'm tooling around with maybe being able to increase this factor with my power conditioners beyond what they already do (can't release any details on it yet). I'm unsure how much of this factor some other companies offer because my ears have yet to hear every single unit out there; I can't claim everyone gets the experience of increased emotional connection from every kind of conditioning - isolation transformers don't do it for me. 

People actually can't conceive, can't understand the difference between conditioned and not in many cases. How the sound changes is such a new way of evaluating sound that we are just unfamiliar with it. For this reasons A/B tests can be utterly useless. But extended listening with and without can draw such a clear picture you'll never forget the difference. It's like learning to ride a bicycle, once you're familiar you'll always know, but until then you aren't sure what's part of the experience and what is you being inexperienced.

[Folsom]

Has anyone stopped to consider that perhaps sometimes people think there is a loss in dynamics because they have old bad hearing that needs shrill eardrum-punching sounds to get anything? 

Just a thought. Might happen to a minor degree but I doubt it's a real concern.

[jimdgoulding]

You really need to make that visit we've been discussing...

I'll give you a very convincing demo on the merit of high quality power conditioning.  Then we can go drink beer!

That go for me, too, Jeff?  Wouldn't mind taking a drive east along the Columbia to a tiny railroad town, Wishram, where I learned to sled like a fiend and had my first fight with a kid older than me.  I figured I'd level the odds and chased him home with a big rock.  I was six but still remember his name.  He gave me the right away after that.  You wouldn't have to convince me of anything.  We could probably get to that beer sooner than later.  Jes kidding.  I'd love to see how you do your work.