I’ll play the contrarian. I’ve done a number of dedicated rooms, with dedicated lines, and over the years tried various power conditioners. My preference is minimal filtering. If you have noisy electrics, the first question is whether it is something within your house, after the service connection, that you can do something about, without the need for filtering.
At present, I have a whole house surge and a dedicated subsystem consisting of a 10kVA isolation transformer, with additional surge protection, that feeds dedicated lines in the listening room. That system is isolated to the degree possible consistent with code, and shares a ground with the main household system.
Sometimes, more is needed. If for example you live in apartment or flat where you are sharing electricity with other living units, or are in a service area where the power is compromised due to other stuff on the line, you may need to deploy more filtering or regeneration. My ideal is to minimize the need for that since filtering for noise or gremlins will necessarily filter out information that may be part of the musical experience. It’s all trade-offs. If you have a good source of power to start with, I’d try to keep the black boxes to a minimum.
No doubt that power conditioners can do something. The question whether it is a net improvement is different, and in my view, risks compromising the signal to the extent you need to rely on more intensive power conditioning measures. (I rely to a large degree on high quality power supplies in amps, the line stage runs on batteries, the phone stage has had attention and all runs through the big iSo transformer mentioned above).
If you can try before you buy, that’s good. Do not base your buying decision on the immediate reaction to what you hear, but if you have time to evaluate with a wealth of material over a period of time, you should be able to get a handle on what you are improving v. what you are losing.
At present, I have a whole house surge and a dedicated subsystem consisting of a 10kVA isolation transformer, with additional surge protection, that feeds dedicated lines in the listening room. That system is isolated to the degree possible consistent with code, and shares a ground with the main household system.
Sometimes, more is needed. If for example you live in apartment or flat where you are sharing electricity with other living units, or are in a service area where the power is compromised due to other stuff on the line, you may need to deploy more filtering or regeneration. My ideal is to minimize the need for that since filtering for noise or gremlins will necessarily filter out information that may be part of the musical experience. It’s all trade-offs. If you have a good source of power to start with, I’d try to keep the black boxes to a minimum.
No doubt that power conditioners can do something. The question whether it is a net improvement is different, and in my view, risks compromising the signal to the extent you need to rely on more intensive power conditioning measures. (I rely to a large degree on high quality power supplies in amps, the line stage runs on batteries, the phone stage has had attention and all runs through the big iSo transformer mentioned above).
If you can try before you buy, that’s good. Do not base your buying decision on the immediate reaction to what you hear, but if you have time to evaluate with a wealth of material over a period of time, you should be able to get a handle on what you are improving v. what you are losing.