Like others here, I only use my Bryston BIT-20 on the front end. All power amps are plugged directly into the wall as per manufacturers recommendations. The Bryston is an isolation transformer. The reason why I went with it after auditioning a few is because it was one of the few that didn’t add or subtract anything to the sound of my system. I’m using very high efficiency horn speakers and have to put my ear up to the speakers to hear any noise and that faint noise that I do hear is from my hybrid tube pre
WHICH POWER CONDITIONER IS BETTER PASSIVE OR ACTIVE WITH ISOLATION TRANSFORMERS
Looking to purchase a Power Conditioner to reduce the noise floor in my system as well as to protect my system from electric spikes. The two types of conditioners seem to be as follows:
- Passive conditioners such as an Audience AR-12 T4 which claims that passive conditioning with the use of chips is the way to go because their filtering is better accomplished without the use of isolation transformers. The proponents of passive seem to claim that the use of isolation transformers adds noise to the components in the chain.
- Active or non passive-An example would be the Niagra 3000, 5000 &7000 by Audioquest which all use Isolation transformers to accomplish the filtering. Most of the conditioners I see advertised seem to accomplish filtering with the use of isolation transformers.
- My question is what type is better and why? Any recommendations would be appreciated. My budget is $4000-$5000.00, would consider used, a/k/a pre-owned.
- Thank you for your input.