Line Conditioning and possible ground issues?

@markd51 

I can personally tell you that the Audience line of power conditioners will not help with DC current issues.

For safety, there should be proper grounding of the household electrical circuitry.   Any structure - or system - without proper electrical grounding is a potential hazard - fire or electrocution.   Only a licensed electrician should deal with household circuitry.

Using a cheater plug for audio equipment is not safe for long term use.  It’s useful only as a temporary diagnostic tool for finding out what’s causing a ’hum’.

For improving SQ, there are "add-on gizmo’s" that plug into properly grounded household circuitry. *    

For audio components, there are two types: ’earth/chassis ground’ & ’signal ground’. In this video, Caelin Gabriel discusses each starting at 19 min 20 sec.  It’s very informative.

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*After experimenting with different grounding approaches for the past 10 years, I discovered that much depends on the design of the grounding gizmo - and the design of the audio component.   Some components benefit and some don’t.   The only way to know is to try.   Generally speaking, my system’s SQ has improved with grounding.

I breezed through some of Caelin's video. 

I gather his gizmo, the Altiera, which he's showcasing will still rely on correct AC.  That this gizmo, and like any-all others such as perhaps the Puritan Groundmaster City, how then can such a unit actually then ground when the origin of electric service is not grounded? 

Again, I gather no cigar, as Caelin explains a ground is there for safety most importantly, and that safety (ground) must originate and be implemented at the service panel, there's no other way, correct?   There's no magic bullet. 

I'll confide:

I bought a used Puritan PSM156 with Ultimate Cable, 6 month warranty left, and believe the USA dealer for such has even placed a for sake ad for it here on A-Gon. 

I got a good price, and don't disbelieve that the unit is some garbage snake oil.  No, maybe it's not a Shunyata Everest, but I didn't spend that sort of money either. 

I'm noticing zero effect, in fact negative effect I felt with testing on a few occasions, and this shouldn't be perhaps. 

Just a small bedroom vintage-modern system I put together, not reference.

The system sounded thinner and anemic with the Puritan PSM156.  And it likely would, if I might have total garbage for electric service. 

I'll investigate soon, with a qualified electrician.

You might ask the electrician what the cost would be to add a modern dedicated line for your system, assuming no other "hazards." Our previous house in NY was from the 1780s and it was expanded from a 4 room river cottage to a very large house over the course of centuries. There was all kinds of funky wiring in the house-- one of the missions of the electrician was to clean up unused wiring and replace stuff that was critical- so a lot of the kitchen appliances got dedicated lines- not something that was required when the last round of renovations was done. We did not replace everything, but a lot. My system worked pretty well in that grand old house. Obviously, prices for parts and labor have gone up since I did that circa 2003.

When I moved to Texas, the house we bought had been fully restored- an 1880s Queen Anne. The infrastructure was circa 2004 so it wasn’t "Old-Old" but I still was concerned about the quality of the juice. I had a commercial electrician come, had the city pull the meter to make sure the meter block was not corroded, and worked from there. Fortunately, I was working with a more modern wiring scheme, but did a fair amount of upgrades (using commercial electricians, who I found understood the needs of us crazy "sound hounds"). 

Prices for work obviously varies depending on locale. I’m very happy with where I’m at at this point-- whole house surge, big Iso transformer to feed the main hi-fi, I use point of use surge on the appliances including computers, routers, etc. Did do a whole house back up generator which involved some planning to keep the ATS separate from the circuit feeding the main hi-fi (I don’t have that big system supported by the generator- the last thing I’m gonna do in a power outage is worry about playing music). One can do this incrementally. I call it a ’system audit" and it may be worth getting a couple different electricians to visit to give you a sense of their knowledge. I found some comfort in knowing that not only the audio system is well supported, but that the entire house checks "OK." The "audit" part did not cost a lot--getting the city to pull your meter may be more involved- but where I am, they came within a week of making the request. All the work was permitted and approved. I know code is basic minimum, and I do like overkill, but doing it according to the local code as applied is important for insurance purposes. 

Good luck, ground loops suck.