To power condition or not to power condition AVR

Unless you have wild power swings because you live in an old apartment or the like, where a power conditioner assists in flattening out the swings with an element of surge protection, there is no reason to introduce a power conditioner.

as properly highlighted in the prior posts, they are just detracting and limiting filters that detract from audio performance. 

As AVRs already suffer from lousy cheap power supplies, the filtering effects are magnified to the negative, not the positive.

I agree with AKG. I’d move up to higher quality separates before spending a lot of money on power conditioning, especially since you already have a dedicated line. But if you have fluctuating power coming into the house I’d consider something with power regulation to help protect electronics, especially since Arcam products already have their fair share of reliability issues. I use an APC H15 and it shows me when it’s boosting and cutting power due to the fluctuations we have here, and it also eases stress on components with a sudden loss of power that also happens here frequently. I will say it gives nice peace of mind knowing it’s working. I have a fairly mid-fi 2.1 HT setup I cobbled together, but my neighbor uses the same conditioner in his Bryston/Martin Logan setup and hasn’t noticed any ill effects from using his APC. Hope this helps and best of luck.

I have used a PSaudio P10 with my AVR and it worked well

@akg_ca

I agree that AVR’s in general are engineered to a lower standard than a typical "separates" configuration, but to make such a blanket statement that "99.9 % of AVR’s are Chi-Fi garbage" is both incredibly arrogant and demonstrably false. Manufacturers like Arcam, NAD, Anthem, etc. are good examples, as they themselves manufacturer separate preamp processors and amplifiers in addition to their AVR lines, and in the case of their flagship model AVR’s, many of the components are often sourced from their higher tiered brethren. I’m happy for you to have the financial means to purchase top-end gear, but comments like that are neither constructive nor conducive to the environment that Audiogon tries to promote, which is a camaraderie among audio enthusiasts, not class segregation between wealthy audio enthusiasts and those with more modest financial means.

That being said, I do agree with your statement that many power conditioners on the market are far too restrictive and essentially trade current delivery for filtration, which is obviously not what you want for an amplifier. However, you are yet again making the mistake of putting out blanket statements, in this case about power conditioners, that are NOT universally true; many options from the likes of APC, Furman, AudioQuest, etc. have high current banks that largely mitigate this issue and feature either battery backups (APC) or current reservoirs (a whopping 90 amps in the case of AudioQuest’s Niagara 7000) that supplement the power coming out of the unit to provide plenty of headroom for demanding source material. If after all that has been taken into consideration you still feel that you are better off plugging straight into the wall, then all I can say is that I hope you have very clean power in your neighborhood and don’t ever suffer a damaging surge to your expensive equipment.

-David

@savdllc, thanks for your constructive input.  I think folks may be missing my point which is this: is there a trade off of power conditioner use for an AVR balancing potential lost current delivery for amp(s) against cleaning up digital noise back out to AC service from processors in the AVR? Even if you have super clean power from the wall, the AVR digital processors my have negative effects that could affect performance of other components driven from the same outlet/circuit.