power conditioner

 I have had a number of power conditioners over the years. An Adcom Ace 515, PS Audio P300, Furman Elite 15 PFI and Shunyata Triton to name a few. I only use a power conditioner for my front end. I plug my amp straight into the wall.

 I leave all my power conditioners on all the time except the PS Audio. The Furman does sounds better if left on. Shunyata says that it take 3 days for the Triton to sound it's best. Nothing is going to protect you from a lightning strike. If there is a huge power surge it is not going to matter if the conditioner is on or off. Whole house surge protection is the better way to go.

 One of the dealers I frequent uses Torus conditioners in his rooms. If I was going to go with that type of active conditioning, the Torus would be my choice.

 I got rid of my Furman because I felt it did not isolate noise very well. I had a problem with an intermittent hum in my preamp. After much searching I figured out that the cause was a compact fluorescent bulb in the dining room. I thought the Furman should have cleaned the power a bit better. I never had this problem with the Adcom Ace or PS Audio conditioners.

 I got rid of my PS Audio because as I upgrade my front end with a tube preamp and CD player. It just couldn't put out enough power. I thought about a more powerful unit but decided that the Power Plants might just be too limiting. 

I now have a Shunyata Triton and I am very happy with it. It is a huge improvement in sound over the Furman Elite. 

 I did not have any real complaints about the Furman other than I thought it should have helped protect against the hum. I actually thought something was wrong with my preamp and ended up sending it back to Audio Research. It was only when my dealer loaner (also ARC) did the same thing made me investigate deeper. But it also made me wonder what other things the Furman did not help protect against.

 I can not hazard a guess on how the PS Audio would compare. It was a while ago and my system has changed quite a bit. I was happy with it until I upgraded my CD player to one with a lot more tubes. Then it couldn't put out enough power and would kick off. 

 I would expect a huge difference between the sound of the Furman and the Shunyata Triton. The Triton retailed for $5000. while the Furman Elite 15 PFI lists for around $700. I think a far more fair and interesting comparison would be against the Shunyata Venom conditioner.

 But this is only my experiences in my system. I imagine power like everything else is very system dependent. So the conditioner that works best for me may not sound the best in another system. 

 The hum was definitely coming from the preamp. The cause was a compact  fluorescent bulb in the dining room. We don't use the lights in dining room much. The bulb was putting noise in the line. You turn the lights on, the preamp had a hum. You turn them off and it was gone. Curiously the two rooms are not even on the same breaker. There was no ground loop. It never happen before or since. So I presume the old Adcom Ace 515 that I was using again before I bought the Furman, did not allow the noise through. It only happened shortly after I replaced the Adcom with the Furman. I just didn't put that together until after.

 gdhal, I don't know. I sold both the Adcom and Furman after I bought the Shunyata Triton. I also don't actually know how the Triton would fair in the situation. I threw away the light bulb when I found that was the problem. I did not want in the house after that. It seemed to be just one bulb out of the 4 in the fixture.

 I don't have any dimmers. And I have went out of my way to get rid of all compact fluorescent in the house. I also find it interesting that the preamp seems to be the only thing that was affected. There was no buzz in the kitchen radio right next to the dining room. The stereo is on the other side of the house from the dining room.

 But it actually turned out to be some what of a blessing in disguise. If the whole thing had not happened I would still have the Furman. The  Shunyata Triton has a much bigger positive impact on the sound. I am very glad I upgraded and it was a great excuse for the wife. Also it didn't cost me anything to get my Ref 5se checked out by ARC as it was still under warranty. Plus ARC said they did a few updates to it while it was there. My ARC dealer was really nice about it even when they did not find a problem. It was just really annoying at the time.