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I'm convinced: my Power Conditioner was ruining...

I'm convinced: my Power Conditioner was ruining my system's acoustics.

I heard it all, but ignored it. I'm in a brown/black out prone area so I've been over cautious using an APC 1500VA powering a Monster HTS 5100 and distributing to my system from there.

Yesterday I was moving things around and I ran the system direct to the APC. F'n AMAZING improvement!!

Within an hour I had it on Craigslist and today it went out the door and I ordered out for Chinese on the new owner.

But for the last 6 hours I've been reading reviews for PS Audio, Richard Gray, Running Springs, etc. Am I nutts? Should I rely on the clean music I'm getting? Why do I feel a conditioner will help when clearly the HTS didn't?

In part I feel it's because I don't understand power enough; I know the APC produces a stepped sine wave. I know that's not good for my use, but does it produce that only when acting as a backup? Short of a regenerator would anything eliminate the square sine?

If you had $600 to spend and you were in my position would you spend it on music and chinese (perhaps Indian next time) or a replacement conditioner?

Thanks All.
kphinney

Showing 4 responses by kphinney

kphinney OP
24 posts
 
Degaussed my system? Now I'm lost. All I know is that with everything plugged in to the Monster it sounds like "A", with the Amp in the APC and everything else in the Monster it sounds like "B", and with everything in the APC it sounds like "C". I mixed and matched a few times, but never ran my amp right into the wall -- I went thru tubes too quickly for my comfort that way.

IMH listening experience the music sounded fuller, less congested, and more full in B than A, and more so yet in C than A or B.

A
So, I'm now running C and my Monster HTS 5100 is S.O.L.
kphinney OP
24 posts
 
I think my post messed up the HTML. I meant to say A < B < C. Let me see if I can fix this by doing this:

Better?
kphinney OP
24 posts
 
trying to get rid of the bold.
kphinney OP
24 posts
 
I agree that a dedicated line may be a good idea -- I have one with 10 guage run straight to a 20amp fuse, but as Timztunz points out it's only as good as the power coming into the house -*to and extent*.

So what of the breaker? It's only a trip switch. It has no internal shielding and for $10 I wouldn't expect it to. Your breaker box has one large mains coming in and (in most cases) two large copper bars running from the mains to the breakers. Any line noise in the house is carried along the A/C current to the breaker box and then redistributed throughout the rest of the house. It's not unidirectional.
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