Power Conditioners Necessary?

Many people have very strong opinions on these, and on some of the audio groups, questions like this have resulted in flame wars of epic proportions !

FWIW, based on many years at the service end of the business, I don't believe that the fitting of such devices will result in any difference in reproduction quality of either audio or a TV picture, that any reasonably sane person could actually discern with any repeatability. That said, I have absolutely no problem at all with advising owners of any electronic equipment that is line powered, that they will do no harm by powering it via a halfway decent quality surge arrester plug or strip. Whilst most modern electronic equipment has at least a degree of front-end filtering and surge suppression, it never hurts to employ the 'belt and braces' approach, and deal with line-borne transients and interference, before they ever have a chance to get into your equipment in the first place.

So, necessary ? In most cases not. Worthwhile ? A not too expensive one might just pay for itself the first time that you have a thunderstorm in the vicinity ...

Arfa

They're worthwhile if you can't find any other way to rid your wallet of all that burdensome money. For the most part, power conditioners and surge protectors are snake oil. It's common for people to blame power glitches for equipment failure, while in reality it's very rare, a well designed piece of equipment can easily deal with anything the power line is likely to throw at it. If a glitch causes it to fail, it was on the edge anyway.

If you saw the profit margins on anything made by Monster, you'd understand clearly why stores push them.

That thing had better be a 15kw generator for that price!

A recent study gave placebos promoted as pain killers. Some were told the pill cost $0.10. Others were told it cost $2.50. Then all were subjected to pain. Those who took the $2.50 placebo overwhelmingly declared better results.

The Monster Cable $100+ solution is equivalent to the protector selling in a grocery store for $7. Everything from Monster Cable is better described as a scam. Why would Best Buy, Circuit City, and Radio Shack promote the Monster Cable product? Learn the profit margin. The naive automatically assume a higher price means a better product - rather than learn what it does and how it actually works.

M> A number of friends and relatives have flat-screen TV's they've bought

I doubt these conditioners would make any difference in the sound or image of your system, but they can protect against such things as a tree falling on a power line and destroying several thousand dollars worth of equipment.

You don't need an expensive "conditioner" to get this protection. Buy a couple of surge suppressors for your electronic equipment, plus an SPS (incorrectly called a UPS) for your computer, so it won't crash during a power outage.

There is actually a legitimate reason to buy Monster cables, according to someone at FatWallet.com: to get a better deal on a big screen TV or hi-fi system. This is because Monster products have high markups and are rarely discounted, at least not buy the big national chain stores, so buy purchasing them along with a plasma TV or 7.1 surround sound system, the store may be more willing to discount the latter more than if they were bought without the Monster stuff. Then after the purchase, return the Monster products for a cash refund, and buy cables from the 99-cent store or MonoPrice.com.

Unnecessary.

Cheaper cables (zip cord for speakers, analog cables from the 99-cent store, digital cables from Monoprice) work just as well.

Extensive power conditioning is done by the power supply built into each piece of A/V equipment, which contains a line filter (capacitors and inductors - see

to stop high frequency noise and minor surges, and electronic regulation to convert anything from

90-130VAC (90-240VAC for most newer equipment) into well-regulated DC voltages, which are further filtered by yet more capacitors and inductors.

Surge protectors can help because they provide insurance coverage for surge-induced damage, but there's no need for expensive ones by Monster (APC and Tripplite products are fine and much chepaer), but consider geting a whole-house protector installed in your main circuit breaker box for even more protection.

Active power conditioners are unneeded, but a battery backup may be desirable if you like to use your A/V equipment during blackouts and don't have a generator.

Point well taken, Arfa. Your opinion coincides with mine--not necessary, but nice. And, I understand about the flame wars. I've read a bunch of those re: esoteric cables vs. wire. David Gow of McIntosh published the definitive paper concerning this subject many years ago.

Jim

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Thieves get rich and saints get shot, and God don't answer prayers a lot.

Understand that, Mr. Sweet.

Had a friend who was a McIntosh dealer in Boston. Bought a bunch of equipment from him over the years. When he started carrying the esoteric cables, I asked him if he thought they would really benefit a system. His answer? "Well, they make a lot of money for me!"

Jim

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There was an article I saw linked on engadget.com the other day. Someone did a double blind test with monster cables vs. wire coat hangers with connectors soldered to the ends. The audiophools they had listening couldn't tell the difference. What a joke.

HeHeHeHe... Didn't even go for the zip cord! :)

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The 'insurance' is so full of exemptions as to be useless. One example:

Even a ground wire to reduce amplifier hum volds the insurance. Even an extension cord voids the insurance?

Take a $3 power strip. Add some $0.10 parts. Sell it for $25 or $150 dollars. Hype some insurance claims with fine print exemptions. They are not selling a soluton. Monster, APC, and Tripplite are promoting obscene profits - will even hype a big buck insurance that does not get honored. Responsible manufacturers instead sell a 'whole house' protector. Other sources such as

or Brickwall provide solutions for power conditioning. However, those equivalent products should already be inside a power supply.

Sometime changing cheap cables can make a difference; I explain: where I leave everytime I listen to my hifi equipment I pickup noise from an Indian radio station (this is worst if I try to listen to LP). All this stop when I change these cheap cable for 1 monster cable (that I got on sale at 20$) and 1 "high-end" cable that I got from RadioShack on sale at 10$. Also for the conditioner I compare a Monster HTS-1000 (retail

280$ in Canada) with a PURE AV ISO 4720J (50$ on sales at the Source) and the PURE AV ISO 4720J was way better than the monster. True I could not hear audio difference except when listening to LP where the sound became more define with a bit more depth (when I say a bit more it is really a bit more is subtle but really there is a difference. By the way I tried a cheap power bar, the monster way to expensive and the pure A/V. While I could not find any difference between the el-cheapo powerbar and the monster there was a difference with the Pure A/V. So yes there is no real advantage to go with a high price Conditioner there is one with the Pure A/V (Beside the 12" power cord and the 10 power outlet)

Jocelyn Proud Son of Leo Major DCM & Nar To know why I am so Proud go there:

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PMFJI, but I'd like to offer an alternative opinion on Monster cables.

One of my jobs through college was in the repair shop of the largest hi-fi dealer in my city. They sold only mid- to high-end gear there; consequently people for the sales force were generally chosen based on their ability to relate (and cater) to the upper-middle and upper class type of customer.

I'm talking about salespeople who could talk an entire morning about how a pair of speakers sounded, never using terminology that approached anything that could be measured by a technician. These folks could supposedly discern the difference in sound quality of a

*tonearm* (not the cartridge, not the turntable, not the connecting cables, but just the tonearm, for heavens sake.)

Needless to say, being strictly technical types, we in the service department built up a fairly solid level of skepticism after being exposed to all these audiophiles for months and months. We had a tendency to think that all the audiophile/salemen were hearing sound qualities that, since we couldn't measure them, weren't really there.

One day the store started carrying Monster speaker cables. So I read all the sales materials about skin effect, etc. and immediately thought it was all marketing hype. I mean, a near-zero ohm length of wire is just that, right? What could be different?

Monster supplied the store with a comparison display which contained a single 4PDT switch so you could switch back and forth between whatever speaker wires you preferred and the Monster cables while running a pair of speakers through a receiver.

The salemen set this up with a high-end receiver and a pair of one of their top speaker lines (I believe they were Dahlquists.) The alternative speaker wire was new, 18-gauge zip cord cut to exactly the same length as the Monster cables.

With no special equalization in play and at moderate volume, the difference between the ordinary speaker cord and the Monster cables was marked, even to my untrained, non-audiophile ears. I was shocked...I even returned to relisten periodically just to make sure I wasn't hearing things myself. I even took the display switch apart to make sure they weren't cheating.

Don Lancaster suggested barb wire. It has the advantage of being hard to steal, once it's installed.

Make sure to keep the points sharp, though! :)

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There is a difference between cheap, and defective.

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Were these selenium coat hangers or copper-cobalt alloy?

If you want really good sound you should get the Monster Foam Rubber Pads. They prevent the vibration of the speakers from causing the FM tuner to vibrate, preventing acoustic resonance and high-frequency feedback. "The only better method is to have your sound system in Skylab." -- Emil Dolby.

The pads are only 43 dollars each and you only need four of them per device. But they are far better than other brands of foam rubber.

You have spent so much on your sound system. Don't waste it by economizing on Foam Rubber.

If you are inclined to email me for some reason, remove NOPSAM :-)

I have my JBL speakers sitting on small cardboard boxes. They do a good job isolating the speaker from the floor. Foam is probably better, but not much.

Huh? Is that like microphonics in the FM tuner? Easy to see if it's a problem. Just bang on the tuner with the volume turned up. Hear anything from the speaker? If not, don't worry about microphonics.

If you watch the NASA channel, you sometimes get bits of the music they play in Skylab. Due to weight considerations, it's probably something like a single, mono, 4" loudspeaker hung off of one of the computahs.

My cardboard boxes were free.

When I was going to kollege in the 1960's, I worked for Federated selling hi-fi on commission. It didn't take long to notice that the commission on speakers and accessories was much higher than the commission on stereos and tuners. So, I sold speakers. I would connect a really cheapo 6 transistor AM/FM portable radio to the best speakers on the floor. The customers would walk in and eventually ask which tuner was playing, I would pull out the cheapo radio by the leads from behind the speaker and explain that it's the speaker that makes the sounds, not the electronics. I sold quite a few expensive speakers and cheap tuners that way. Don't waste your money on foam rubber band-aids. Get a decent speaker system.

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