Like most of us on this site I have obsessed about various aspects of my numerous sound systems during the past 55 years (started when I was 7). I have also spent thousands of dollars for improvements that did not materialize or faded with familiarity. I love a great sound system, but have come to be disgusted by many aspects of the hobby, especially the BS factor, the marketing hype and the general lack of truthfulness. Nowhere is this problem worse than with cables and power products, although I do not want to throw out the baby with the bath water, if there is a baby in there somewhere.
Put simply, all I want is a system that can basically fool me into thinking that "I am there", at a price that is reasonable with pieces that justify their presence and cost. I realize that this desire is not novel and somewhat elusive and certainly subject to personal taste. However, physics is physics and we are playing with electricity in this game and thus would love to open a thread that tries to deal with the fundamentals so that each of us has as clean a foundation as possible upon which to base our personal preferences.
So this brings me to power conditioners and the power cables that connect them to equipment and the interconnects and speaker wire that connect the equipment to each other. At this point there is little question that modern day power has noise unless you generate your own and nothing else is connected to add noise-although many would contend that regeneration units add their own type of colorations. It makes sense, based on physics, that any noise that "rides" on the sine wave of power will in some way affect the end result, but the question is how and to what extent, AND more importantly how to deal with it.
As I try to put together a totally new system for a new environment (Thank you Sandy once again) I am looking at how to spend my money wisely and try to keep the system as simple as possible. Since I have always loved electrostatics I have decided to return to them and thus will be adding an additional level of electrical complexity to my system as I try to generate that elusive pseudo reality. Fortunately I am able to spend several thousand dollars on components that I deem worthwhile, even ones without knobs or glowing faceplates. As someone who values power and subwoofers, I also can draw some significant current during crescendos and/or while playing air guitar.
During the last year and especially the last 2 months, I have tried to learn what I can about power conditioners and the different design approaches. I am pretty sure that I do not want a big transformer based unit because of the inherent lags in most transformers and my love of crisp transients that emulate what happens in nature. I am particularly interested in the offerings from Shunyata, because they make sense to my level of understanding of power and physics and because I heard a demo at CES with their Zitron technology that was quite impressive.
I am hoping that this thread will have those from the engineering world chime in as much as those from the pure audio world.
Put simply, all I want is a system that can basically fool me into thinking that "I am there", at a price that is reasonable with pieces that justify their presence and cost. I realize that this desire is not novel and somewhat elusive and certainly subject to personal taste. However, physics is physics and we are playing with electricity in this game and thus would love to open a thread that tries to deal with the fundamentals so that each of us has as clean a foundation as possible upon which to base our personal preferences.
So this brings me to power conditioners and the power cables that connect them to equipment and the interconnects and speaker wire that connect the equipment to each other. At this point there is little question that modern day power has noise unless you generate your own and nothing else is connected to add noise-although many would contend that regeneration units add their own type of colorations. It makes sense, based on physics, that any noise that "rides" on the sine wave of power will in some way affect the end result, but the question is how and to what extent, AND more importantly how to deal with it.
As I try to put together a totally new system for a new environment (Thank you Sandy once again) I am looking at how to spend my money wisely and try to keep the system as simple as possible. Since I have always loved electrostatics I have decided to return to them and thus will be adding an additional level of electrical complexity to my system as I try to generate that elusive pseudo reality. Fortunately I am able to spend several thousand dollars on components that I deem worthwhile, even ones without knobs or glowing faceplates. As someone who values power and subwoofers, I also can draw some significant current during crescendos and/or while playing air guitar.
During the last year and especially the last 2 months, I have tried to learn what I can about power conditioners and the different design approaches. I am pretty sure that I do not want a big transformer based unit because of the inherent lags in most transformers and my love of crisp transients that emulate what happens in nature. I am particularly interested in the offerings from Shunyata, because they make sense to my level of understanding of power and physics and because I heard a demo at CES with their Zitron technology that was quite impressive.
I am hoping that this thread will have those from the engineering world chime in as much as those from the pure audio world.
