AC line conditioners

That is like saying you can not upgrade the tires on your car if they were not around when the car was made

Huh? This makes no sense. You need to rethink your thoughts on this. What power filters were used when something was recorded has nothing to do with using a power filter on your stereo. You are trying to not add any more noise from your own power.

Martin Glasband, of Equi=Tech spent years cleaning up recording studio power. Then in 1992 he introduced the use of balanced power units on which he holds several US patents. Until 1996 (I think) they were only used professionally in studios while awaiting UL approval for consumer applications. Power regenration was also used in studios, but the equipment was too cumbersome for home use. With advances in technology and miniaturization of component parts, companies like Exactpower can now offer that capability to the public.

Tice introduced components that were really "old technology on steriods" packaged for the home audio market. Don't read that as a criticism, it's all that could be done at the time. They started where TrippLite left off (too noisy) and packaged it for the public.

Monster, PS Audio, Panamax followed in the tradition of Tice -- ie they didn't employ regeneration or balanced power, although maybe they do by now, I'm not sure.

Also bear in mind that our power has become far more contaminated by computers on the lines, RFI from microwaves and cell phones, cable TV, etc. In the '80s our power was relatively free from many of the things that plague us today.

I have a passive preamp, built in the '80s, that sounded great back then - now, without power conditioning, the noise from my power lines is so strong you can hear it in the speakers clearly with no source components on. With my power conditioner, the line noise dissappears.

When I first started to get into stereo my main objective was to hopefully re create the recording as faithfuly as I could to what was laid down in the recording studio or the live event.
Around 3 weeks ago on Jonesy's Jukebox Jonesy (Steve Jones/Guitarist for Sex Pistols)said that over the weekend he went to this house in Laurel Canyon where this guy had a system and as he put it "it must have cost at least 600,000 dollars and the guy played some live taped Sex Pistols on Reel to Reel and asked Steve what he thought and he told him his guitar doesn't sound like that,it sounds more throaty, dirty with more vibrato. Steve started laughing when the guys face just dropped as he stood there in front of these stacks of amps,line conditioners,and two monsterous speakers and two sub woofers. Steve said all they used to do was plug in and away we went. They don't use line conditioners at most live events do they,are we taking some of the enviorment from the recording?

I think Jjmali is making a lot of sense here........ A lot of music that I like was recorded on field recoders by guy's like Alan Lomax in the '20-30's. That doesn't mean I should use playback technology from that time period to reproduce this music. The goal should be to get the maximum from what HAS BEEN recorded.

BTW, These day's in professional sound reinforcement (live sound) and recording studio's they absolutely do use power conditioning.

Chris