This has been the subject of a few emails lately. Some of you may have noticed the Belkin surge protector in some of our pictures (what we call the Office Depot Special 🙂 ).

Here is an example of an email that we received from a nice gentleman,

“I perused with interest your Audiophile’s Guide to the Galaxy. In your Power Conditioners, Isolators and Regenerators section, I noticed your following claim:

Typically power conditioners increase dynamics and lower background noise at the expense of microdynamics, emotion and that toe-tapping pacing, rhythm and timing.

I mean this very respectfully, but as an experienced audio / video technician and avid audio enthusiast, I can’t think of any reason why a power conditioner should have any negative effect on microdynamics, emotion, or pace, rhythm and timing. Perhaps you will be good enough to share with me what experience or impart on me that knowledge which has led you to this conclusion.

I enjoyed your web site and will certainly recommend it to others I know.”

First, we thank you sir for your kind words and question.

There are two answers to his main question.

The first is my preferred answer, which is:

* We have tried a number of power conditioners and by far the common result is that we, and many other people, consistantly hear these negative effects.

So, this is that good ole scientific method of performing repeatable experiments and observing the results, The important thing here is that the observation, the ‘measuring’, is done with the ears and not mechanical or electrical instruments.

If someone has the time and genius to create a phsycial model of why power conditioners do this, build the instruments to verify their model, perform the experiements and determine that yes, their model matches the evidence of what we *hear*, then that would be great.

It is this return to first principles, to common sense, that many people [for example those that will not hear differences in cables] we see post on the net fail to recognize in their pursuit of science as religion [you won’t find a more scientifically geeky couple than Neli and I – but true science knows that it does not know, it only hypothesizes testable, verifyiable and often quite useful models of how many things work – but models often need revising if the experimental data requires it, and there are not detailed models for EVERYthing out there yet – like cables and powercords and power conditioners… 🙂 ], that somehow science, circa 2006, now knows ALL the answers, and if science can’t explain it, then it don’t happen.

So, in actuality, no one knows exactly WHY most power conditoners have this effect.

Eventually someone will figure it out.

But it might not be very satisfying.

For example, the sun warms our skin when we are outside. Why? Because (and I am paraphrasing, and probably not absolutely correct, but follow my point, if you will) the photons from the sun hit our skin, increasing the kinetic energy of the molecules floating around in the epidermous layer by converting the electromagnetic energy of the photon into mechanical energy of the molecule, which our nevrve endings interpret as ‘warmth’.

I beleive that is the model that best describes what happens in today’s scientific gargon, but there are both a lot of holes in the explanation [how is the energy actually transfered from that massless photon when it hits that wonking large molecule? All we can say now, is, that it does. The apples falls when we drop it because of gravity. Gravity is created by the Earth’s mass deforming 4D (or 11 or whatever) space. Why does mass deform space? It just does. ]

.. and it is not as satifying as one might want it to be, as say ‘the sun is sharing its life force with us’, and the real explanation is not often very useful in dealing with the situation: warm sunrays, gravity and power conditioner effect are really dealt with better in the common sense mode: wear sunscreen, don’t jump off tall buildings and don’t use power conditioner indiscriminately.

But, with all that out of the way, and with the reader now knowing full well that I am Making This Model Up – just like everybody else who is not performing real experiments [that can be verified, othrewise we will have them proving gravity does not exist, the sun is not warm, and power conditioners all work wonders].

And it is:

That power needs to be supplied to components as instantaneously as possible, and capacitors, usually found in Power Conditioners, even after being charged up for a few days, absorb charges while simultaneously being unable to release a charge fast enough, and in correct proportion to the request to compete with a straight wire, and also cannot be large enough to release a charge that is FREQUENTLY needed by larger components like amps. Same with coupled transformers.

When the component asks for more current, there is some delay and, primarily, dampening of the magnitude of response in electron flow coming from the wall. The PCs seem more inept at handling small ‘spikes’ in the request stream that major spikes, so that often MACRO dynamics does not suffer as much, or may even be increased.

Hmmmm…. wonder if that was clear. It also helps explain (in my head if nowhere else 🙂 ) why powercords work – they hold a resevoir of electrons ready to supply the component’s needs instantly.

Oh, and just to finish up, most Power Conditioners, being unable to respond instantaneously to demands for current, these small spikes, in order to render the more subtle details in music is what puts those more subtle details, microdynamics, emotion, at PRaT at risk.

Hope this helpssssss………

[The Shunyata Hydra, that we use here when we they are not out on audition – contrary to Robert Harley remark in this month’s TAS, is not a power conditioner – it is a power distributor. There is nothing in the path of the current getting from the wall to the component. BTW, also contrary to his assertion, the Pyython -sorry wordpress dies on the correct spelling – is not 98% of the Anaconda. No one, not us, nor anyone else would pay twice as much for a 2% improvement. We’re nuts but not NUTS]