Power Conditioners


Not sure if I placed it in the correct topic but here goes. I was just wondering how power conditioners work, as I want to buy one. There are conditioners with only filtered inputs and conditioners with some filtered inputs and some unfiltered. I believe the unfiltered ones are for analogue devices. But why should these go into the unfiltered part? If I buy a power conditioner for example with only filtered inputs, will I not be able to put my class A amp in? Or will it have a negative effect?
sjeesjie
Hi OP
....different input types (filtered vs unfiltered).

on my APC  power conditionner,  ´´  unfiltered  ´´   is for power amp.
or  subwoofer  .  Where a lot of power is immediatly needed.

´´ filtered  ´´  is for pre amp, Dac , blueray,  etc.
A while back I was dealing with this question and had some really nice exchanges with recently passed Almarg.

Al, you might not know, had a quite a lot of experience. He summed it up to me this way:

Re my background, I’m a retired electrical engineer, with a little bit of a legal background as well. Specifically:
  • BS in Electrical Engineering, Columbia University
  • MS in Electrical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute JD (Law Degree), University of Connecticut
  • Licensed Attorney and Patent Attorney
  • 33 years experience designing and managing design of analog, digital, A/D converter, and D/A converter circuits for defense electronics, primarily airborne radar systems.
Al said he had hit upon a reasonably priced and, in his view, sufficient solution. Here’s what he suggested and what I bought:

Three things to buy:

(a) Audience Adept Response aR2p power conditioner — found it used
(b) Wiremold Legrand powerstrip (available at Newark)
(c) Shunyata Research Venom Defender AC Power Line Reducer — found it used

Hooking it up:
(a) Audience plugs into the wall.
(b) Powerstrip plugs into the Audience
(c) Shunyata plugs into Powerstrip.

My total cost was $578.

Done
So if wall warts go into the dirty zone, does it also mean the DAC and the record player? Only amp and CD player have grounded power cables so they go into the clean zone?



Dirty/clean is not about having a ground plug.  The ground plug is usually a safety, not a noise, feature.

But anything with a digital power supply and/or processor is something I try to put in it's own, like network routers and switches.
Agree with Eric. Additionally a well designed DAC will have a Faraday Cage AND a linear PSU so you can put it on the clean side.