Does a good power conditioner reduce need for power supply upgrade?


Would like to hear Agoner’s opinion on this topic.  It appears to me that power conditioning as a part of power distribution role for your whole system, and high end external power supplies designed to either replace and beef up internal linear supplies (e.g. Naim approach) or to replace cheap switching wall warts or internal supplies supporting a single piece of equipment have a similar function, that being to reduce noise without restricting current.

Interested in what you think.

kn

knownothing

Showing 1 response by knotscott

I tend to deal with both aspects the best I can. A good conditioner should only help, but I can’t say as though it’ll make up for the short comings of a cheap wall wart.

My conditioner is a Lightspeed CSL3200. I’ve never done any comparisons, and I haven’t removed it since installing it about 6 years ago, but I have upgraded the wall warts for my modded Bugle 3 phono stage, and my modded SMSL DAC, and both of those upgrades were notable, then I plug those into the conditioner.

A lot of lower cost components use those cheap wall wart unregulated switching power supplies, but it’s fairly easy to replace them with a linear regulated version with the same specs (many generic versions are under $50), and should always be a step in the right direction....whether you can actually hear it or not, it’s less likely to fail and cause a problem to the component.  If you're the type that tries to leave no stone unturned, and you're looking for easy potential upgrades that don't break the bank, I'd recommend it.