Dedicating circuits and fancy power outlets

I think Elizabeth has it right in a nutshell. I'm supposing, at least, this is why so many people have relative success with it: it gets rid of other devices on the AV circuit. No, in reality here, there's really no such thing as circuit isolation, not altogether anyway. That's what any good electrician will tell you and it's perfectly true. What audiophiles tend to not get right is that noise in fact travels on all 3 conductors, neutral, ground AND hot. This alone makes the breaker box grand central for distributing both power and noise. Everything you plug into the wall in your home generates noise, period. Anything that's on or has a sleep mode (pretty much everything any more) will be sending noise back to the panel where it's then sent throughout the home...the farther away (the longer the wiring runs) the other stuff is from the AV circuit the better the noise reduction to a small degree (noise begins to fade the farther away from the source), but the real solution is proper power conditioning. The only problem THERE is that almost nobody makes a proper one (and even if we are to believe that the all-in-one box solutions are of an appropriate design - and I for one certainly don't), the $5000 starting point for any big-league solution can scare most folks away. From what others tell me, Shunyata makes at least a pretty good conditioner, but we audiophiles probably don't really need increasingly "better" (and ever-more expensive) all-in-one conditioners, so much as we simply need basically smarter and more effective solutions, all costs aside. Look, I know this all amounts to pretty much a shameless plug on my part, but it's the only game in town that I know I can point to here. There is a relative newcomer I've tried and have become a fan of by the name of Alan Maher (Alan Maher Designs, facebook only). His is the ONLY gear I know of that DOESN'T constrict or curtail the audio band in the pursuit of filtering (in fact it extends it)...and I believe that's THE reason why power conditioning in general fails for so many. Even the megabuck ones (check any forum for the score on all that). Alan's gear is different because the filtering principle is unique and because he's selling you a variety of different smaller pieces that are located at different points throughout the home (directly at the noise sources) as well as at the breaker box and your AV circuit. All of this reduces electrical noise (and the AV noisefloor) like you'd expect, but by a LOT!, not just somewhat - but, like I say, withOUT the usual audio bandwidth problems - no loss of dynamics or frequency shifts. A HiFi hobbyist, Alan is a roadie by profession and has a ton of professional and practical experience. I find him to be as knowledgable as any ee, but without the fatal flaw of insisting that there's no answer to any technical, HiFi-oriented issue that can't simply be looked up in a book...(hogwash, I say). Alan's the first one so far to successfully bridge the gap between the 2 worlds, that I know of. Couldn't help but like his overall remarkably unbiased and yet take-no-prisoners, no-bs approach. I can recommend you give him a try. Been a customer of his for about a couple years now and, as far as I'm concerned, you can take every word he says as gospel - even if I don't have the wherewithall to 'prove' he's right in any forum...not many people in this hobby I'm willing to say that about...probly 2 or 3, but he's definitely one. Anyway, he has already answered EVERY one of the questions in your OP on his website, or you can message him, if you want. Whether you'd want to trade your Hydra in for what IMHO is likely a more cost effective solution is certainly up to you, but Alan's gear can generally be used in conjunction with or apart from other brands of power conditioners.