Line voltage is 116 not 120 why?

Magfan - Not necessarily. My amp (Rowland 102) has SMPS and produces the same maximum power for supply voltage 85-265V.

Nasman - I had it powered from the wall but recently I added Furman Elite PF20 conditioner. Rowland is plugged into high current bank of outputs. It removed bass resonances (nodes) while not affecting dynamics and opened midrange a little (Furman supposed to increase available peak current to 55A). I'm not sure if midrange is due to Rowland or Benchmark DAC1 (that drives it directly) that is also supplied thru conditioner. It could be that bass resonanses were masking midrange. The really strange thing is that TV picture got cleaner, brighter and more vivid (stronger colors). Furman supposed to correct for power factor and TV is DLP (projection). Maybe just bulb is brighter now in addition to digital noise reduction (HDMI).

Hiendmmoe - Amplifier will be louder at 120V (unless is regulated) than at 116V by less than 2%.

(120^2/116^2)^(1/3.5)= 1.0195

Magfan - No, lower voltage doesn't make for higher current draw (it happens in SMPS) but only limits max peak power. Amp in a sense is a regulated supply that delivers required (at given moment) voltage to the load (speaker). If it runs out of available supply voltage it will start clipping. If you don't use whole available power then line supply voltage change won't affect you.

What amp takes from mains is completely different story and depends on type of amps. For class A amps it will be constant current while for class B it will be just a few percent of max rated power of an amp. The reason for that is that music has very low average value and scale is logarithmic. When sound level is at 1/2 of max loudness amp takes 1/10 of max power.

Linear power supply takes current from the mains in very narrow spikes of high amplitude. It is in a sense SMPS that operates at 120Hz. Width of the spike depends on the current demand but also on output impedance of transformer and ESR of capacitors (Schaffer diagrams). It is called conduction angle. Because of that transformer has to be oversized (RMS power required is much higher than average power taken + high frequency content is heating the core) and power supply wiring and cords have to be oversized to avoid drops.

Linear power supply is therefore pretty noisy outside and using shielded power cables is needed.

Magfan - power factor is on the top of it but I was talking about current that linear power supply takes from mains - it is not sinewave but series of high amplitude spikes.

Power factor in my system is corrected by Power Conditioner - I'm not sure how.

Magfan - My Conditioner corrects it, but I bough it purely for filtering and good non-sacrificial overvoltage protection. I cannot often understand how things like power cables or conditioners improve (or destroy) sound but I trust experience of fellow Audiogonners.

As for dedicated line - I'm running it on standard 15A outlet. It is legal to connect 20A conditioner but main 15A breaker might go first in case of overload. In addition I got good deal on Audiogon plus 20A unit should be beefier than 15A. I was concerned since many people reported conditioners killing dynamics. Not in my case.

"Fundamentals count here more than glitz and weird science"

Magfan - Open minded people get extra benefit of better sound thru placebo effect while sceptics and "scientists" will never get improvement in cabling.

Magfan - It is possible that I don't have any loss of dynamics with conditioner because of SMPS that is regulated. If conditioner drops voltage at high current peaks SMPS is responding fast holding regulated voltage on the output. Icepower class D amps were praised in few reviews for holding composure during loud, heavy orchestral pieces. It might be because of this SMPS. Traditional power supply can do the same with a lot of electrolytic capacitors.