Should Amps be plugged into a power conditioner?


Greetings,

After reading about the amplifier hum, it was mentioned that some knowledgeable people say NOT to plug an amp into a power conditioner. Plug it directly into a wall outlet. Thankfully, I do not have a hum issue, but am curious as to what others say about where to plug your amp into. 

Thank you!

lovehifi22

@atmasphere 

Current limiting starts at the power cord. Any time you have a glorified power strip, like so many so-called 'power conditioners' seen marketed to the high end audio community, the power cord it uses will have a voltage drop.

is a strip acceptable for all but the amp, or are you saying that everything should plug directly into the wall?

@dentdog Anything with a transformer (like an isolation transformer) is subject to the distortion made by the transformer itself. Generally speaking, to avoid excess distortion from the transformer it must not be loaded past 50% of its rated capacity. You'll have to work out the math (Firefox has a security warning on my machine that suggests the Audiopax site doesn't have a proper certificate so I couldn't make out how much current the amps draw) to see how you sit. Obviously a passive power transformer cannot correct for a line Voltage drop and it will pass distortion that is already on the line.

@immatthewj Power cords (and power strips) have a Voltage drop across them (Ohm's Law), which is why power cords and the like have an effect on the sound of the equipment used with them. You really want to keep that to a minimum. The more power the equipment draws the more effect the power cord can have; feedback in the equipment will help it reject AC line Voltage effects. So the efficacy of power cords and such vary from system to system, sometimes by quite a lot.

I use a power strip in my system but the amps are not plugged into it- they run off of AC lines of which they are the sole user. My preamp is pretty heavily regulated so it tends to be immune to power cords and the like and the rest of the system hardly draws any current, so it works pretty well. 

 

The Spectral Audio manual says to plug their amps into the wall.  I don't use any devices to clean or regenerate power for any of my audio equipment.

I plug mcIntosh mono amplifiers into a transparent power isolator. It doesn’t restrict anything and is designed to remove lots of magnetic Radio frequency noisy stuff along the way. It cost around $6000. Also well insulated power cables are kind of important too. Just spend some money and get a nice box that you can plug your gear into and I think you’ll live more happy.

Plus it offers a hydraulic surge protector which is appealing. The purists don’t like surge protectors but I don’t see the problem and my panel has a surge protector but I don’t wanna take a chance and destroy a very expensive amplifier because of some stupid lightning bolt due to a large tree I own or whatever.

I use a power strip in my system but the amps are not plugged into it- they run off of AC lines of which they are the sole user. My preamp is pretty heavily regulated so it tends to be immune to power cords and the like and the rest of the system hardly draws any current, so it works pretty well.

@atmasphere , thank you; as always you provide helpful input. I posted a question on powerstrips a year or two ago, and I will spare you the entire story (because you would get bored and stop reading in short order) but I ran three dedicated lines into my listening room quite some time ago,

and then

I read some posts that made me question what I had done. First there was a thread about dedicated power lines which attracted several replies and also seemed to generate a few other threads on the subject, and although there was not exactly a universal agreement on the subject (surprise!) the take away I kind of got was that one dedicated line would be preferrable to multiple dedicated lines due to the interaction of grounds and neutral wires on the neutral bar. And not only that, I did not route my three dedicated lines in the wall with a lot of space between them, so I guess if rf is the reason for dedicated lines, I’d say that I didn’t achieve anything by that.

Therefore I put all my gear (CDP, pre, amp, sub) on one duplex. In order to do that, I used my glorified power strip for the CDP and the pre and I plugged my amp and sub into a 3 into one adapter/plug that I plugged straight into the wall.

I guess my other option is to connect the duplex that I am using to another duplex (in a series, if I am using the term corr4ectly?) which would give me two more outlets (on one dedicated line) and I would no longer have to use the glorified strip and the 3 into 1 adapter plug. I have kind of been holding off on that because where I have the 3 gang outlet box for my system is not the most comfortable place for me to work.