Power conditioner wire gauge? Serious issue

@jumia "It's about impedance along the way and no one seems to understand that"

I would add more functions such as removing odd/even mode harmonics, noise, and isolation as well. 

Since the action of conditioning the power must consume some of it, the conditioners of which you speak presumably have power supplies of their own to make good the loss.

@clearthinker

They do.

The PS Audio, if I understand correctly, employs a low distortion oscillator that gets amplified by the power amp inside and then drives a power transformer. To keep the power draw of the device down they are probably using a control transformer for this task.

In the Elgar, there is also a low distortion 60Hz oscillator. It is synchronously locked to the AC line. The AC power goes through an enormous isolation transformer. This transformer has a set of windings for the power supply of the built-in power amp. The main output of the transformer is compared to the oscillator. A difference voltage is thus created and amplified by the power amp. The output of the power amp is applied to a feedback winding on the transformer. In this way the output of the unit is kept low distortion (no harmonics, especially the 5th which is the most problematic). The output voltage of the power amplifier is also used to 'buck' the isolation transformer, providing boost or decrease as needed. In this way its also able to regulate the line voltage without current limiting. Pretty cool!

In both cases the active circuitry draws power of its own. Care is taken to minimize the power draw; regardlesst does not rob voltage from the output in either case.

We used a PSAudio 20Amp unit at AXPONA last year. The hotel line voltage got down to 110V or less at times but our voltage in our room was always at exactly 120V.

Elgar seems really cool, any comparable conditioners out there? It seems to be a well thought out device and most of the devices these days lack the ability to understand what the hell is going on inside them. They all sound so fancy but fail to really explain themselves very well. 

@atmasphere     Thank you for this detail.  You have the knowledge of these things and your posts are very informative.

I have gone the path of reconfiguring the power supply in my home and I am happy with the sound I get from a fairly upmarket system.  I sometimes wonder what improvement power conditioners might achieve, but at my age I might not hear it.

Besides, even PS conditioners would probably have trouble powering my Krell KRS200s, upgraded by Krell to 400w per side.  They draw power like room heaters.  But I won't be parted from them.

@atmasphere , is this Elgar thing you mention also called an AC power supply? I signed quite a few requisitions for AC power supplies for the EE lab and reliability lab. Keysight was one of the brands we bought. I cannot remember the other. We were lucky to pick up I think 5 nearly new from a company that was going under. We sell worldwide so we need to be able to generate any supply voltages our customers may use both for design, and reliability testing.