@incorporeus, as you well know, having clean power running through your mains is critical to getting the best sound out of any hifi system. To that end I use an AudioQuest Niagara 1200 power conditioner in conjunction with an AQ Thunder power cable in my dedicated headphone setup. The Niagara takes inputs from three LPSU’s, my hp amplifier, an iFi iPower DC power supply for my network switch, and from my CAT6 router. I chose AudioQuest because my audio dealer of over 40yrs is a big retailer of AQ products, and also because he gives me a very generous discount. When there is no music playing between tracks, or even within a recording, the background is absolutely pitch black. As the designer of power equipment at AudioQuest, and formerly at Furman, Garth Powell explains that power cables and conditioners do not add anything to the SQ of any system. All they do is take things away. If I had known how critical clean power was when I started my audio journey I definitely would’ve spent even more money.
Power Conditioning on the Cheap
This is my first post here after a bit of lurking, so please be gentle. I realize this subject must come up a fair amount and I've read erik_squires blog posts on the subject, but I was hoping to get the community's opinion on the relative merits of a few relatively basic power conditioners. I've narrowed my list down to a few options at a range of (fairly modest) price points. From low to high they are:
Furman PST-8D
ifi Power Station
Furman Elite-15 PF I
Shunyata PS10 w/ Venom Defender
Audioquest Niagara 1200
In a perfect world where I didn't have a limited budget I would probably buy something higher up the line from Shunyata, but since we live in a decidedly imperfect world, these are my options, although I would welcome other suggestions that fit within this price range.
I should also probably mention that while I value subjective reports on the sound quality of various products, generally speaking I give more weight to objective measurements or at least arguments based in sound science. More embarrassingly, I also place a certain amount of value on aesthetics. Aesthetic taste being inherently subjective, (a debatable point, but for the sake of argument lets just assume that it's true) lets just say that when I lust after completely unobtainable equipment it tends to be from companies like Soulution or Pilium rather than Dan D'Agostino or darTZeel.