I've become a somewhat uncomfortable believer in AC power tweaks based on experiences over the years. "Uncomfortable" because the logical side of me wants to blindly declare that this stuff doesn't matter (theory says; not in the signal path, what about the rest of the circuit back to hydro-electric dam, etc.) but my ears sometimes tell me tweaks here can matter.
I've had mixed results with fancy power cords and conditioners where the effects seemed very subtle and varied from no effect to positive and even negative sometimes - as experienced with a few 'conditioners' and some components. Some things that did resonate as positive overall and worth the effort & money though; dedicated circuits back to panel, quality hospital grade receptacles (and a good 'plug' into them) and for some reason, certain power cords like the Soundstrings cable on digital equipment.
My results may be specific to my system & environment (YMMV) where I seem to have a good, stable supply to the house and often listen at night, but the low-buck quality building-block stuff mentioned above - and the opportunities provided by having extra audio circuits - seem to have provided the biggest gains for me.
I've recently taken this further by building a distribution box kit from Partsconnexion, then pushing all my digital junk to this box and using the Soundstrings cable to hook it to the wall, where it's on a separate circuit from all my analog audio components. The player PC, power supplies for DACs and digital crossover/EQ for the filler woofers are all into this box and anything digital using wall-wort power supplies like laptops, netbooks, monitors or phones stay on that separate circuit. (and yes, this thing is simply an aluminum box full of hospital grade receptacles).
There are probably good technical reasons why this works (keeps digital noise and grunge away from the audio circuits?) and there is the voodoo factor of the Soundstrings chord (which I can't deny anymore after being gob-smacked by its effectiveness in the past) but this has proven to be a pretty solid overall system upgrade. The turntable and all things analog seem to sound better on their own like this and the digits seem to play from a quieter place with more subtlety, contrast and layered whole-osity than they did before.
More and more, I'm seeing that digital can be fantastic if you get the analog right and keep the digits away from it - until it is an analog feed into the pre-amp inputs. Less is more, and optimize the analog first and foremost just seems to work for me.
I've had mixed results with fancy power cords and conditioners where the effects seemed very subtle and varied from no effect to positive and even negative sometimes - as experienced with a few 'conditioners' and some components. Some things that did resonate as positive overall and worth the effort & money though; dedicated circuits back to panel, quality hospital grade receptacles (and a good 'plug' into them) and for some reason, certain power cords like the Soundstrings cable on digital equipment.
My results may be specific to my system & environment (YMMV) where I seem to have a good, stable supply to the house and often listen at night, but the low-buck quality building-block stuff mentioned above - and the opportunities provided by having extra audio circuits - seem to have provided the biggest gains for me.
I've recently taken this further by building a distribution box kit from Partsconnexion, then pushing all my digital junk to this box and using the Soundstrings cable to hook it to the wall, where it's on a separate circuit from all my analog audio components. The player PC, power supplies for DACs and digital crossover/EQ for the filler woofers are all into this box and anything digital using wall-wort power supplies like laptops, netbooks, monitors or phones stay on that separate circuit. (and yes, this thing is simply an aluminum box full of hospital grade receptacles).
There are probably good technical reasons why this works (keeps digital noise and grunge away from the audio circuits?) and there is the voodoo factor of the Soundstrings chord (which I can't deny anymore after being gob-smacked by its effectiveness in the past) but this has proven to be a pretty solid overall system upgrade. The turntable and all things analog seem to sound better on their own like this and the digits seem to play from a quieter place with more subtlety, contrast and layered whole-osity than they did before.
More and more, I'm seeing that digital can be fantastic if you get the analog right and keep the digits away from it - until it is an analog feed into the pre-amp inputs. Less is more, and optimize the analog first and foremost just seems to work for me.
