Well, I tried a power conditioner...

I do run a Blue Circle Music Ring (smaller balanced power unit) and it made a big difference in my condo on the front end gear. My Odyssey amps goes straight into the wall though since it has two Plitron 400 va transformers and 180,000 capacitance.

 

I'll use surge protection and battery back-up on some items.

I need something to give me the extra outlets anyway, plus we have a lot of lightning on Florida.

Never saw the need for a power conditioner.

Then, I don't indulge myself in gourmet wire either.

 

If your gear has properly designed power supplies, you do not ever need power conditioners. The whole concept is idiotic. If you've got money to burn, buy better components.

 

It’s been 10 years so I can’t remember the name. I got it from my local stereo shop, and he was great about returning it.

 

Yet, there are plenty whom have benefitted from adding power conditioning to their properly designed high end gear because they have a lot of noise on their lines.

 

Well, it's a shame you can't remember. You might have been able to save someone from experiencing what you did.

 

I think it may have been a Furman

 

Interesting, they have a pretty good reputation. Perhaps it was defective.

 

That all depends on just how sensitive a given piece of electronics is to various types of noise, as well as over-and under voltage conditions. Nothing has an infinite common mode rejection ratio. And some houses receive terrible voltage regulation from their electric utilities. In some cases good RF filtration, or isolation, or voltage regulation can be helpful.

 

Then mine was defective too. Because I tried a Furman about four or five years ago and it made my system worse.

 

He gave me another unit and it did the same thing. That’s when I gave up and got a refund.

 

In that case, I don't blame you, but to dump on all power conditioners because of that really isn't fair.

 

Perhaps, but not necessarily... It could simply have been the wrong type of device for your system. As I have state multiple times in this thread already, there is no such thing as a one size fits all power conditioner. Different systems have different needs. And the wrong device for your system has the very real potential to screw-up your sound.

 

If it's to the rhythm of the music, I'll buy 3!

 

I've had mixed results with conditioners and the better the equipment the less they're needed as @Warren Jarrett noted.

I tried a conditioner on a Bryston amp - made no difference BUT on a Marantz Surround Sound receiver - the conditioner (from Monster) made a substantial improvement to the noise floor. Making it sound a lot more like the Bryston. But Bryston is a very low noise floor amp while the Marantz has a lot of STUFF piled into it.

My Grant Fidelity power conditioner did nothing for my Audio Note OTO (maybe made it a bit worse) BUT it supressed the high frequency noise (hash) of my Cambridge Audio CD6 CD player. So what I do now is plug the OTO directly to the wall and the CD6 into the conditioner. The CD player is a much more budget unit and it is a digital source so perhaps that is why it was more suseptable to noise. I have since moved from the 1960s apartment (with tube circuit breakers) to a 2 year old townhouse. When I get back to Canada I will try it again and perhaps with all new electrical outlets etc the power conditioner might not be needed at all.

I suspect in much older homes or in certain areas these things can work well - but it's no guarantee and so I would never buy one if you could not return it.

 

I bought a Richard Grey's Power Company 400S many moons ago. While I expected the biggest improvement from the amp, I actually noticed it most with my CD player. I had plugged it in and then plugged the CD into it, and forgot that the CD player switch was "on" and that it automatically plays when powered up with a disc in it. Music started, and for a few moments I didn't even recognize it as an album I had heard maybe a hundred times before. Very surprised at the difference and the abundance of new detail.

Now, I also heard no difference with my amps plugged in, and no difference in my analog set-up. I think a quality power duplex (tight grip on prongs) and maybe a dedicated power line are more important than conditioning, unless you have a specific power problem to solve.

 

That echoes what I've been told more than once: digital sources tend benefit the most from power cords and power devices.

 

If YOU hear no difference then there is no difference.

 

If there is nothing pressing at this point, it is always an option to simply place the available funds into a savings account until something essential comes along... you know it will eventually...

 

Great replies. I'm returning the Denali after a little more listen today.
My son was back. He is in music school (Jazz Piano and is quite good).
So I asked him to come and listen. He thought at first that there was a small improvement with the Denali.
But then later he wasn't entirely confident.

He's got some friends who are more into studio stuff and recording and vocal singers etc.
I asked him to invite them for a listen and see what they think of the room and the sound and if some room treatments are in order.
My son says he likes the sound of the room (and most of the time, so do I) and my non-audiophile friends (which is all my friends) are always impressed.

Still anyway, my dealer has said I can try the Audioquest Niagra 5000 for a few days and maybe I will just for the heck of it.

Oh and yes, although our neighborhood isn't new, the block where we got our house is new. All the 6 houses were built in the last 5 years about. The power transformer for the block is on our lawn. So I certainly don't have issues older houses might have or condos might have.

 

There aren't many 'night and day' experiences in audio despite the hype. One that certainly is is proper positioning, room treatment, and DSP/EQ.

I too never had room treatment and thought things sounded good, and I had good equipment. First I learned about getting good positioning. Then, on a dealers suggestion, I looked at bass traps etc.. There's a lot to understand but basically the room and its contents interferes with the sound as it leaves the speakers - you are not getting what the music producers intended. For the higher frequencies that's easy to understand - you get reflections of walls etc.. For bass though it's more complicated, and difficult to deal with but if you get that right, or better, it 'releases' all the other frequencies too.

You can test this a bit by playing a bassy song and walking round the room. Bass sounds different in different places. That's the room doing that.

I now see the years listening without positioning/room treatment/careful EQ as wasted years!

 

Although I don't use them, they are one of those audiophile things that I admit has it purposes.

The main point is whether or not it performs anything beneficial on a particular system.

Power lines were designed to run washing machine's lights, air conditioner's, appliance's, and commercial applications.

They were never intended to provide pristine clean power for audio gear.

I have an Emotiva power amplifier, which the manual clearly recommends not installing power conditioner's on the unit, as they have already addressed any issues that may require power conditioning in that amplifier's power supply.

I think that most audio gear will have power supplies that already address power issues.

If you have a dirty power line and your gear does not address the power issues, then I makes sense to employ power conditioning.

If you can not discern an audible difference, I would return the unit and spend the money elsewhere.

Companies like this, do instill fear and uncertainty in potential customer's. They do so, because it sells more of their power conditioner's.

Just don't buy into hype.

 

There has to be a problem for a solution to be effective.

-Bill

 

Add me up to the "i'm shocked at difference it made" team.
My dealer gave me this to try: ISOL-8 MiniSub Wave Mains Conditioner
I didn't know what to expect but was taken back by the difference it made, very pleasant surprise.