[Tyson]

It's all important, because it's all a system.  But the fact is that the type of speaker you choose will determine what other choices you can make - for example, if you get an Apogee, you'd better have an arc-welder SS amp to drive them.  On the other hand, get something like the Gedlee Abbeys or the GR Research V1 or V2, and you can use a much smaller fully Class A amp to drive them.  Even low powered tube amps are an option.  So the speakers influence your amp choice.  Everything else is very important also, but those things come second after you've figured out your speakers and amps.

[Folsom]

How many power conditioners actually isolate components?  There's very few.   

It isn't per say about isolation. But what you can do is add levels of filtration to each outlet that curbs a lot of the noise they could share. My experience is things that go to extremes, like isolation transformers, are never the best answer. The goal is to do the best job possible without having any trade offs. (hardly anyone likes the sound of isolation transformers)

[wisnon]

Well the Montreal folks of UHF magazine says it all starts with the SOURCE. That is the PRIME limiting factor. Bad source and its game over before you start. Next would be speakers as they are the transducers of electricity to sound waves and speakers influence the amp choice.

If people like controlled directivity, then they should be mentioning the Gradient Helsinki ($6K new). Weird looking but when paired with their specialist subs or even cheaper with some TBI Magellans, then for $9K new, that is a "transduction" system. I saw a great condition 2nd hand one from Toronto for $3K a couple months back. Also, if you can afford more, you could look at Servo-subs as well, but I am partial to TBI.

As for conditioning, I agree that overkill is easy to do and destroyer of smiles made a good point...its as much art as science.

Finally, I have heard great things about the ART Legato II, but long waiting list beckons!

[toocool4]

That is where I disagree. ENTIRELY. Even components in your stereo produce certain amount of noise that they can share among themselves. Even if I don't have a way to explain it, the results are something else. Frankly 99.99% of peoples idea of "noise" isn't very good; they're trying to remove what they can identify as audible noise, I am trying to make the music actually sound good. Well designed equipment doesn't let apparently audible noise through very easily, but all of it is subject to all noise affecting it. The difference is in level of fatigue, tonality, attack, decay, inner resolution, and what isn't yet definable by words. Being concerned with RF and stuff that resembles tape noise is an immature understanding of power conditioning.

Saying you don't have noisy mains for me is like hearing that you should treat a fever with ice baths. It sounds good based on your conception of what is going on, but the complexity of it is beyond such simple conception, show by the truth of the improvement. In fact this parallels a lot of life where people want simple answers that fit their simple comfortable ideas of how anything should work. Personally I find the attempt to fit everything into human paradigm, as if we can mold the world to our simple understandings and never learn anything new, repugnant. It undermines the beautiful complexity and wonderment of everything, which we are able to appreciate over time with openness to understand in new ways. We should be ready to accept to be proven wrong on very fundamental ideas, because it will happen.

Each to his own I would not waste my money on a power conditioner, not necessary. I have very sensitive components i.e. Spectral Audio Pre & Power amp and they work very well without help from power conditioning.
The only thing I have noticed making a lot of noise in my setup is the Rega Ios phonostage, this I easily fixed by moving the turntable power supply away from the phonostage.

The money saved by not having a power conditioner can be put towards better speaker cables, interconnects etc far more beneficial.

Power conditioner, power cables etc all I can say about that is snake oil but if it works for you go for it. 

[Quiet Earth]

Having your mind made up before you listen is what this thread is all about

[Quiet Earth]

An isolation transformer is not what I would call an extreme component, it is just another tool. Typical isolation is only 14 dB, thats all. The problem with transformers of any kind is that good ones cost an arm and a leg. That's why you would rather avoid it than use it. Also, you only get success in the right situations. A 1800 watt xformer for a system that draws a couple hundred watts is no problem.

[Quiet Earth]

It's all important, because it's all a system.  But the fact is that the type of speaker you choose will determine what other choices you can make - for example, if you get an Apogee, you'd better have an arc-welder SS amp to drive them.  On the other hand, get something like the Gedlee Abbeys or the GR Research V1 or V2, and you can use a much smaller fully Class A amp to drive them.  Even low powered tube amps are an option.  So the speakers influence your amp choice.  Everything else is very important also, but those things come second after you've figured out your speakers and amps.

That makes sense. 

[Folsom]

Each to his own I would not waste my money on a power conditioner, not necessary. I have very sensitive components i.e. Spectral Audio Pre & Power amp and they work very well without help from power conditioning.
The only thing I have noticed making a lot of noise in my setup is the Rega Ios phonostage, this I easily fixed by moving the turntable power supply away from the phonostage.

The money saved by not having a power conditioner can be put towards better speaker cables, interconnects etc far more beneficial.

Power conditioner, power cables etc all I can say about that is snake oil but if it works for you go for it.

Power conditioning isn't for correcting your mistakes, or cheap components. It is a benefit if it can help, but that isn't what they ultimately should be doing.

My friend who claims his power conditioner from me is his most important component, has utterly stopped caring about looking for better components and accessories. He listens, a lot. I'd personally rather listen to a cheaper stereo with my power conditioner, than a more expensive one that does some stuff in a better fashion; because even on better stereos I find myself wanting to do other things, not wanting to listen to album after album. Sometimes I go into a kind of meditative state, not asleep, not awake, when listening to music but not on stereos without power conditioning; I'm more likely to twiddle my thumbs and wonder about other stuff. Ok, yes, I'm a little more ADD than some of you, but the point is I don't have to convince myself to continue listening because I have trouble stopping.

Your example is exactly what I am talking about. You believe in naive theoretical terms that you don't need one. Perhaps you've used some you didn't like. But you are thinking about something so much less romantic than enjoying music. Quantifying noise and the affects of noise in a stereo with our primitive language and conception utterly pales in the face of subjectivity towards habits of listening. If we like something and we listen a lot more, that is more important than our inability to explain the terabytes worth of information being delivered from our ears to our brains every second, in small concise words that try to simplify the experience to idiocy in terminally defined theory.

Let me see if this example helps. If another guys stereo is not plugged into a power conditioner and we play an MP3 ripped to a CD, at volume XC (a chosen constant for testing purposes) it is unlistenable, you have to turn it down, and probably off if you have any good sense for yourself. Repeat playing the same MP3 track at XC with a power conditioner (mine), all of a sudden it becomes listenable, you can tolerate the loud volume, hell you might even be tapping your foot. In both examples there doesn't have to be any perceivable noise (and there wasn't) for this to be true.

I think a misunderstanding happening here is the assumption that noise and music are separate. The noise is the music. Whether it is identifiable or not doesn't change that factor. It is no different than passing a signal through a capacitor, because every signal is going to be passed through parts of a component that has noise. Noise will collect as part of the sonic signature and be the music. You don't have to know it is there, only that when it is gone well... bliss.

But as pointed out, start listening to your ears, not your puny conception of what you think should be true or not.

[toocool4]

This is interesting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ

[goskers]

Well the Montreal folks of UHF magazine says it all starts with the SOURCE. That is the PRIME limiting factor. Bad source and its game over before you start. Next would be speakers as they are the transducers of electricity to sound waves and speakers influence the amp choice.

If people like controlled directivity, then they should be mentioning the Gradient Helsinki ($6K new). Weird looking but when paired with their specialist subs or even cheaper with some TBI Magellans, then for $9K new, that is a "transduction" system. I saw a great condition 2nd hand one from Toronto for $3K a couple months back. Also, if you can afford more, you could look at Servo-subs as well, but I am partial to TBI.

There have been many astonished people who see an iPod based front end running lossless files.  Some very well respected people have proven that the source is important but not really an end all.  It is pretty easy these days to attain a good front end.

Sure, Gradient mentions controlled directivity as it has become quite a buzz word.  I don't see any data to back up the claim.  So many areas, including audio, is ruled by marketing.  It is on the Internet though so it must be true.

[Quiet Earth]

Yeah, iPod as a source. Universal disc players and personal computers too. They all suck as a dedicated source. Plain and simple, lo fi mediocrity. Blah!

[Folsom]

This is interesting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ

Panels of experts to tell us what we hear .

I always encourage people to listen for a week or two, then pull the power conditioner out. If it wasn't immediate and obvious to begin with, you'll find you miss it so much you have to get it back (or buy one). Straight AB testing isn't the best way to go. The human mind begins to become acquainted with things over time. Like you know what one persons foot steps sound like after awhile; but you couldn't explain it. If you AB test you become subject to a lot of faults. The world works like this, experience lets you find differences because of familiarity instead of tricking yourself.

I've tried lots of little tricks, and what I do now is apply them, leave them in my system for awhile. Then I take them out in like a month, and if I don't immediately notice a difference than I know it was in my head before. But some changes don't need this, some are like night and day so I wouldn't be able to trick myself at all; like no different that switching speakers.

The ESS video I thought was super fascinating. It points out that what we understand isn't so simple. To the point that different types of the same thing are deal breakers. The Audio Myth people are not discussing this. For example T-amps are loved but they have massive distortion, yet no one seems to mind?

*The guy on the panel said that everything picks up sonic signature through a preamp, he recognizes this, so I don't think he'd argue capacitors sound different, but the measurements are the same? Also he claims that tapes are bad because distortion builds on them constantly, so new digital stuff is better? Why then do people like listening to old distorted tapes more than digital so much? or Vinyl? What he is defining as good and bad isn't what he likes or does not like to hear, it is what he thinks he should like or not like. He is trying to convince us his terms of good and bad are what we should and should not like. Frankly a lot of his good and bads are things I don't care about at all; they've never stopped myself from listening to music. The volume of a frequency is how he would judge quality, I myself judge it based on whether I like hearing it or not. He is vastly more egotistical than audiophile who have fun tricking themselves on occasion.

He makes the same mistake to think that noise is not part of the music. Different parts of a stereo will act differently depending on the amount of noise they are subject too. This is particular with things like DACs. You can have both noise, and changed music from the noise.

[Folsom]

I'm going to let one member borrow my power conditioner for a bit. Perhaps he should be shipping it to someone else for a trial?

I'm in the middle of building a FirstWatt F5, so I can't listen to music anyway