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 Post subject: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 27 Oct 2018, 13:21 
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And if so is there any discernible difference in video or audio quality/stability? My equipment is plugged into a decent surge suppressor, but I'm thinking of getting a basic Furman line conditioner for the first time. A lot of folks seem to swear they are pure snake oil; just wondering what good/bad/indifferent experiences people have had.
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 27 Oct 2018, 14:54 
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After dealing with a 150 year old house I would agree.

Pure snake oil.

I've seen what they do to the wires when wiring a house, its nothing magic and its all snake oil.
Now if you think or feel that you do see a difference then gratz to you.
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 27 Oct 2018, 18:10 
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I say not snake oil if used for protecting your equipment as opposed to expecting some magical increase in picture resolution and sound depth.

Personally I have thousands of dollars of equipment plugged in so a good power line conditioner that (hopefully) protects said equipment is just for peace of mind. Now if you expect them to live up to the magic claims on the box then yes snake oil.
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 27 Oct 2018, 21:42 
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I too have a surge protector for supposed protection of shorts etc. But you get the same with a circuit breaker in your panel.

Just after dealing with new wiring in a house I see that a lot of it is snake oil, but I will still use my 40 dollar Monster Power circuit strip.
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 28 Oct 2018, 04:43 
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Whether it’s snake oil or not, i’d still rather have a line conditioner/surge protector than nothing at all or a cheap power strip with no surge protection.

I still use a Panamax, Max-1000 on my main set-up and a Max-5500 AC Regenerator for a secondary set-up. Both have not given me any issues but I have had TV’s die during the time they were plugged into them (neither from surge damage but more from regular wear and tear).
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 28 Oct 2018, 09:51 
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There's no need to get powerline conditioners to improve on image and audio quality. If that's the case, your powerline is so unstable that it shouldn't actually be used.

In Europe, we have overall very stable powerlines but I'm not so sure what it's like in the U.S. so for safety reasons there could certainly be cases where those are handy to get rid of eventual spikes. But on the other hand, if you've bought an amplifier for $3.000 or more, I suspect that it should already have a decent enought PSU to handle those issue. In those cases, you're buying something that you already have...
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 28 Oct 2018, 12:46 
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Good day fellow members,

Yes I use a: ISCOTEC SIGMA that keeps the power very clean, although my home is a new build and the electrics for each room is separate and well earthed.
I do not get any interferences from any other household appliances and it's a great place to live with great neighbours.

Kind Regards to everyone

:thumbup: :wave:
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 11 Oct 2020, 16:25 
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Old topic but with the increasing overall value of my A/V gears with a mix of 100V and 120V and Japanese storms/typhoons with a real impact on power grids, I'm thinking about buying a little protection from:

1/ The power outlet variations
2/ Neighbors on the same power strip

For 1/ I have.... nothing and for 2/ I realized I'm using low price 100V Japanese strips for both 100V and 120V.

Not ideal.

I have worked with APC devices for a while and the H10 or H15 looks good but it will only output 120V (even when used on 100V) up to 1.5KVA, and APC has no 100V model available. They only do PDU and UPS in Japan.

https://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/APC-AV-Black-1kVA-H-Type-Power-Conditioner-120V/P-H10BLK
https://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/APC-AV-Black-1-5kVA-H-Type-Power-Conditioner-120V/P-H15BLK

Only model I found in Japan (maybe I'm not using the right Japanese keywords for searching) is: http://www.electroharmonix.co.jp/furman/pst2plus6.html

Which is the 100V version of: https://www.furmanpower.com/product/15a ... ip-PST-2+6

Any other brand/recommendation I could follow?

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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 11 Oct 2020, 16:44 
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I've heard nothing but good things about Furman. Panamax as well.

I use a Monster HTS 3600 only because I got it for $20.
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 11 Oct 2020, 17:12 
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I just unplug my player from the wall when I'm not using it. :?
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 11 Oct 2020, 17:31 
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If you live in like, rural Texas you might actually need one. I have one but I got it for free and I basically just use it as a surge protector to get more outlets.
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 11 Oct 2020, 18:46 
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Unless you live in some old gaf that's lined in lead, asbestos and is directly underneath a pylon then I wouldn't bother.

Sure if things were that bad you'd get the council or a contractor out to have a look at your wiring outside. Maybe rewire inside as well? Dunno, I'm not a sparky.

Half that stuff peddled on AV forums and magazines et al is pure snake oil. No, those argon coated power cables made out of uranium and quadruple wrapped in a twisted Fingerite and Hazenite (two of the rarest minerals on Earth) core dipped fifty seven times in polonium will not make your signal any cleaner.

My favourite is the utter pillocks who spend thousands on audiophile USB cables. It's 1's and 0's lads, come on.

http://www.computeraudiodesign.com/cad-cable/

For analogue connections, fair enough, there's some differences here and there. Put the money in to that, not the other rubbish. For HDMI (except for long distances), USB and so on, jog on, and take your snake oil with you.

What do I use for power connections? An APC unit does it for me. Extra peace of mind, and for prolonged power cuts or funky spikes, it gives me time to start shutting things like my NAS down and so on.

For the money folk spend on such muck you could have a decent holiday. Slip on over to Club Tropicana. If you're that hard up the drinks are free.
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 11 Oct 2020, 19:28 
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teddanson wrote:
No, those argon coated power cables made out of uranium and quadruple wrapped in a twisted Fingerite and Hazenite (two of the rarest minerals on Earth) core dipped fifty seven times in polonium will not make your signal any cleaner.

The super expensive stuff does not make sense, but if I have an AV device with a flimsy lamp cord, I will put an $8 14AWG cord in it.
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 11 Oct 2020, 20:01 
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Digital audio, especially DACs and ADCs, and power amplifiers are effected by the high frequency noise on the power lines. Other electronics are also effected but much less so. Distortion and voltage sag are a lot more tolerated in general. It doesn’t matter if you live in an urban or a rural area(or you live in Europe), you have noise in your power lines. I was a power distribution engineer for Nationalgrid which services Europe too (physics work the same anywhere anyway)

These noise are high frequency but low magnitude (low energy) therefore they are in the very low octaves. If you have a very revealing audio system with extremely low noise floor, you want these noise eliminated therefor they don’t contaminate the audio information on those very low octaves. Most audio equipment (including very expensive ones) are not in this level of revelation. Ultra High end audio equipment however have very audible improvement if they receive clean power.


Short answer: Don’t worry about the performance improvement unless you spent more money on your audio amplifier than your car. Power surges do occur and will damage your equipment. Most surge protectors will use MOVs to suppress these. MOVs are similar to diodes but work in the opposite way. Their values drift and decay over time. You probably replace them every few years. Best surge protectors use microprocessor controlled relays. These react much quicker and do not drift. These used to cost a lot of money but past couple years there are some relatively inexpensive ones. Audioquest Powerquest line are $200-300 I believe.
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 12 Oct 2020, 11:47 
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Never had a single blackout, brownout, or power surge at my place in Tokyo for all the 15 years I've been here. I wouldn't worry unless you're in a really old house/buidling (and if that's the case, you should probably move anyway as I'd be more worried about the place crumbling or burning up if a big earthquake ever happens)
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 12 Oct 2020, 12:48 
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I spent a lot of time looking into this as the idea of supplying my Laserdiscs players with the cleanest power seemed like a good idea, considering that it's an analog format and is susceptible to noise. What I found is that to get the ultimate in mains conditioning you have to spend thousands. Something like the Audioquest Niagra 7000 will set you back £8k. Is it really worth it at that price?

One area that my research brought me to is balanced power supplies. Say you have a device that takes 240v, a balanced power supply will split that to 120v per leg, supposedly cancelling out noise because of the inverted phase. Theyre a lot cheaper but still an investment. Read more about that here.

In the end I got burned out researching it and wondering if I spent the money if it would even make a difference. So I bought the cheapest possible thing. The Tacima CS947. Although I like having it, I cant say it's made a jot of difference.
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 13 Oct 2020, 07:13 
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jd213 wrote:
Never had a single blackout, brownout, or power surge at my place in Tokyo for all the 15 years I've been here.


Probably a fair point. I live in a recent condo with good infrastructure but I spent years protecting my gears in Singapore where the power could fluctuate quite a bit with micro-outages.

Also a family habit to always unplug most of the electrical appliances (except for the fridge!) when leaving home for several days.

I don't want to mix up plugging 100V-only and 120V-only devices.
And the final target setup is to eventually rack all my gears properly.
A rackable basic power strip with protection sounds good to me.

The used market for FURMAN in Tokyo seems quite decent. I see a lot of gears used in music studios, outdoor racks, etc. where they needed clean power out of generators or a very noisy environment (bar, club) for both Japanese (100V) and American (120V) devices. That makes sense.

This page has a good summary table for Furman:

https://www.itb-onlinemixing.com/blog/the-best-power-conditioners-for-audio

Selling used on these units (few buyers) seem to command big discounts.
I'll set myself a $50 limit for each (100V and 120V) models and see what I can get.
That could translate into a PL-PLUSJ (100V) and a PL-PLUS (120V) for $100 both, not too bad.

Julien
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 13 Oct 2020, 14:56 
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jd213 wrote:
Never had a single blackout, brownout, or power surge at my place in Tokyo for all the 15 years I've been here.


Wow, I've had all of that in every place I've ever lived in 3 different states in America and multiple locations in each state.
NYC even.
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 13 Oct 2020, 16:37 
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When it comes to surge suppression and protecting gear I think obviously that’s helpful. Everyone has lost something at some point, probably an early 80s TV.

But when I hear about this “conditioning” I sorta laugh. I mean, is there anyone who is BOTH a) able to explain what “conditioning” is in normal technical terms and b) recommending they be used? I’ve never seen that.

I know the basic thing that’s being thought...that all that chroma noise in my S201 may be reduced with lab perfect power. I just don’t think it’s realistic as with an LD player there is a TON of noise being generated by the player itself.

And how does a conditioner actually condition? Is it like a massive massive cap and a variable frequency drive so that it can generate a new %100 perfect AC wave form? If not, I don’t really see how you can “condition” the power. A device like that would be a few thousand, most likely, if it’s not %100 reliable it can single handedly wipe out everything plugged into it. Is it like a really high speed chip that follows the wave forum and damps any peaks or valleys? Like a dynamic compressor for AC voktage? That might work but the chip would have to be really good if it’s going to be better and more reliable that the power company.
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 Post subject: Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners?
PostPosted: 13 Oct 2020, 17:23 
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signofzeta wrote:
And how does a conditioner actually condition? Is it like a massive massive cap and a variable frequency drive so that it can generate a new %100 perfect AC wave form? If not, I don’t really see how you can “condition” the power.


Well, you have have protector, conditioner, regulating and more advanced filtering stuff (only letting the 50/60Hz pass, filtering the rest, etc.).

=> https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/power-strips-power-conditioners-voltage-regulator-difference/

I'm not trying to improve audio or video in anyway, just insulate the gears from wall power and among themselves.

If you put $30~50 on the table, don't be surprised if you're getting scammed:



$100~200 (new) you get a little better:

https://www.talkbass.com/threads/a-review-you-think-furman-power-conditioners-are-worthless.408603/

APC is clearly a better build but starts at $400+:

https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/176173-quick-help-choosing-power-conditioner-furman-elite-15dm-i-or-apc-h15/

Then you go into the very expensive where each back outlet has it's own filtering path.


Here I'm just replacing basic $10 no-fuse, no-nothing basic power strip with... a rackable glorified power strip with fuse and on/off button.
I know I'm not buying a nuclear fission plant :-)

Julien
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