Mains conditioner - home made as good as Isotek Aquarius

[Marco]

Yup, that's used separately, for eliminating digital switching noise, which my CDP and DAC are plugged into. Very effective indeed, and I wouldn't be without it!

Marco.

[Pharos]

Interesting varied reports.

A lot of work to be done to prove and get a handle on what is going on, and I suspect from my own expectations after doing improvement work on mains DBT to eliminate placebophile effect.

[YNWaN]

One of my power amps uses a switched-mode power supply. My room has a dedicated audio ring and some sockets wired to the main house ring (the one for that floor of the house) and I can't hear any difference with it when moved between the two rings.

[Yorkshireman]

I use an Isotek Minisub GII for the CDP & DAC. The power amps are direct into the ring, when putting those on the isotek.
Makes quite a difference, to the sound (better seperation, detail), cleans the noise up well, when going back to direct into the ring, the sound is more muddy for a better word.

[Marco]

One of my power amps uses a switched-mode power supply. My room has a dedicated audio ring and some sockets wired to the main house ring (the one for that floor of the house) and I can't hear any difference with it when moved between the two rings.

Excellent. It's always handy when you can't hear any difference, as it saves spending money or worrying about it!

Marco.

[The Black Adder]

+1 for the Mark Grant / Tube Distinctions digital filter... it's a stonkingly good bit of kit.

[montesquieu]

I'm with Justin on this. Been round the houses with a whole load of different mains filters, mainly when I lived over the fence from an industrial estate and the mains was noisy as hell.

Assorted filters all helped a bit but a PowerInspired 1500 was the thing that did the trick - massive improvement and a fraction of the cost of the equivalent PS Audio regenerator.

I sold it when I moved here, as the power is pretty clean and I could hear no improvement with it plugged in. (Likewise the Tube Distinctions did nothing at all here).

My biggest takeaway from all that is that problems are 100% local and you may or not hear any difference with any mains product depending on local conditions (including your kit).

[The Black Adder]

Someone touched on this before but doesn't a balancing transformer do the same thing?

[blackstar]

Yeah, the BMU has quite a following. There are a few manufacturers and they seem very reasonable on price compared to some of these mains conditioners.

[YNWaN]

Excellent. It's always handy when you can't hear any difference, as it saves spending money or worrying about it!

Marco.

Yes - I didn't describe my point very well as I was rather time pressured. What I meant is that the system sounded the same whether the SM power amp was wired into the dedicated ring the rest of the gear used or plugged into the normal house ring. Of course this doesn't particularly prove anything. The particular amp I'm referring to is intended to be used in the pro arena and likely with a whole bank of identical units (one for each pair of drive units); it will certainly be complying with all the relevant international RFI standards. Finally, as Marco implies, although I did compare I didn't really go searching for issues and was quite happy to let this particular sleeping dog lie after a relatively cursory investigation .