Power conditioners

To the geniuses who think it’s cool to pee all over Monster products in general and their power conditioners in particular, the latter aren’t much different from today’s high-end, stratospherically priced stuff. After all, there are only so many ways to filter AC: inductors, caps, MOVs for surge protection. The difference is that Shunyata or Synergistic Research will pot that inexpensive, decades-old circuitry in epoxy, so that credulous audiophiles can gawk at it and be like, oh look! Their technology is so revolutionary they entomb it inside those mysterious black boxes! $8000 is nothing!

By the way, you don’t know that of course, but some Monster Power conditioners were designed by Richard Marsh and Damian Martin. As a result, the odds are excellent that those readily surpass any stuff Shunyata and SR ever made.

Puritan Labs PSM 156-NFR Studio Master Mains Purifier.  Update.  100 hrs. break-in.  All aspects improved from initial report.  This thing is a beast.  YMMV.  Cheers

Regardless of what's in a power conditioner and what it costs, I'm very suspicious about manufacturer's claims about how good it is, yet don't bother to give you any filter curves, Joule capacity, bandwidth, etc.  Clearly, for low cost units, you aren't going to get a lot of data because it's doubtful any verifiable tests were done.  But, for the big ticket boys, it's inexcusable not too publish their attenuation, isolation, surge capacity, and bandwidth specs.

I don't care what folks say about a given component, I'm not spending my money on a black box made with secret sauce with claims of wonder and amazement.  Line filtering is not an art form, it's pure science. So if a manufacturer is being secretive, I'm very suspicious. 

@spatialking 

If you were a manufacturer, why would you bother gathering and publishing serious performance data when audiophools are willing to pay substantial amounts of money for epoxy-potted knockoff 90s Monster Power circuitry? Honestly, I wouldn't either 😂

@devinplombier. That's a good point.  However, if they did publish their data, it would tell the potential consumer that they are an honest Company

Another thought I had this morning, if Brand A had 50 dB of attenuation and Brand B had 54 dB of attenuation, it might become a spec war, just like the THD wars back in the 1970's.  Consumers didn't really understand what THD was, they just knew they didn't want it.  The reality is the vast majority of noise problems are fixed with 35 to 45 dB of attenuation and more than 60 dB is typically a waste of money.