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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.

incorporeus

Showing 1 response by sbrill

sbrill
1 posts
 

One thing you might give a thought to is a true industrial grade UPS.  I picked up a used Liebert GXT3 3kVA UPS for around $400 with new batteries.  It completely isolates from outside AC by actively converting to battery and then regenerates the AC wave. (Caveat: manual says it has "pure sine wave" but I have never measured for noise, but this is nothing like the computer backup APC's.)

Of course, it takes a bit of work to put in place. I have some electrician experience and so hooked up a 30A circuit from the box to the UPS in my basement (no fan noise!) and then plugged in a PDU (power dist unit), a glorified power strip with dozens of 20A receptacles, from the room above, which is my listening room.  Of course, if I relocated elsewhere in the house, I'd have to run a dedicated circuit from the UPS.

I get 2 benefits: backed up AC power (with batteries and normal load I get about an hour), and clean power with no spikes or brown out issues,  I'm running a digital audio system with Small Green Computer pieces and KEF LS50's, and also run my laptop and monitors for safety.

It's been effective keeping the noise low and I'm isolated from spikes and outages, which are especially problematic for these digital systems.

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