Mains Conditioner s What Do Yer Think ?

isoteks can work and sometimes they dont . suck it and see . i have had 4 isotek syncro now and a number of isotek products

 

I feel like you're inside my brain.

 

That video is making me giggle uncontrollably.

 

I listened to the Isotek dem and apart from finding the person in charge personable I thought I heard differences quite resolutely, even at their lower end.

Who knows. The truth may be out there.

 

I recall one dem isotek did with an amp with a noisy transformer .they put the syncro on it and it stopped completely

I once used it on a puresound l10 and the effect was pretty good , more musical and enjoyable
Used one on an arcam a85 as well ,if i recall there was a bit of hardening of sound .

Really a case of trying them ,sometimes they make equipment sound worse .especially power amps

 

Personally if your psu from your amp etc is well designed you dont need any of those expensive conditioners .I have some pics with a synergistic research power cell 12....if anyone interested to see how does it look inside

 

About 8 years ago I saw a large nicely finished silver metal box in an Ilford charity shop. What could that be I wondered? On closer inspection I saw it's top offered 6 3 pin mains sockets and I immediately thought that would be a neat way of powering the stereo. It felt ressuringly heavy and at £25 it would have been rude to not buy it.

When home I realised it was made by Nordost who I'd somehow formed a sort of snake oil cable merchant impression of. I saw that it is called a Thor 100R Power Consitioner and placed it on the lowest shelf of my rack where it has been ever since. The system sounds great but then I did have a dedicated Spur wired for the stereo when I moved here 17 years ago.

I'm not all that interested in testing whether the conditioner makes any difference or not, but when I first fitted it I felt it did clean things up a little.

 

Lots of well understood theory here about differential and common mode noise, may products need to have some EMI suppression to pass EU regs etc. I have found little benefit yet from common mode filters. I also have yet to try a mains conditioner that runs in series that didnt slug dynamics. Although hearing the A-B's at the recent Isotek demo and speaking to them, seems they agree that a lot in series kill dynamics. I have had some good results with parallel differential mains filters. These do not go in series so do not add any impedance, life changing ? No, but somehow subtle yet fundamental. Without I lose a sense of life and reality, resolution is reduced and it's less tactile, musically on point and dynamic. I have started to explore Mains again.

check out Roy K Ritche as he was superb at getting the structure of you means form the incoming fuse right and this has a greater effect

 

Would anyone recommend taking antibiotics as I have heard that there exist some bad things which might happen to you which might become less bad if you take antibiotics and I was wonderign whether I might have one of those bad things and then it might get better which would be a good thing no?

 

If thats an analogy it's not a very good one

 

Don't forgot Rockwell was pretty infamous for inventing Aliens !!

 

I'm always a little bit cautious about 'The other places' conditioner reports as I think you need to check them with 'dirty' power in order to see how much they clean it. Start with relatively clean power in the fist place and I'm not sure you will see much difference between in and out.

 

Wat
I agree with your custom title though. A wildly varying chemical bag of meat is not a good sound quality evaluation device.

 

I would read the ( Isotek Aquarius) review/measurements again, any ‘filtering’ is at far too high a frequency.
Keith

 

Humans are well known to be prone to worry about things. I understand doctors in general practice have a phrase for some who come to see them: "the worried well". Correspondingly, there are audio "problems" that might happen, but in rare cases. These provide fodder for journalists to write about, and for the audio industry to "cure".

Occasionally, when I have the time and facilities, I check out an issue (mains noise was one) and so far I have found that in my circumstances there was never any problem that needed curing. I now largely ignore molehill-sized or rare "problems" that get written about, and simply enjoy the music. But that's merely my experience and it's important to observe that others obviously enjoy the hobby differently.

 

True- and some doctors will resort to providing a "treatment" for them.

There are also socially transactional approaches to medicine which can lead both sides to feel the need to ensure that the patient leaves the room with something.

Kind of. The interesting point is that as an engineer you immedately know that a mains conditoner is (at best) only a potential solution to a particular problem. And that is ultimately the fallback rationale for such a device (when challenged). But in reality the mains conditioner is marketed to people and bought by them as a solution to the problem of needing to have something to sell and needing to have something to buy.

Absolutely- it seems that for many people there is nothing in the slightest bit odd about asking whether a mains conditioner would be a useful upgrade and what it sounds like.

 

I had one of those for a while. It was made for Nordost by Isotek, IIRC, using Nordost cable internally. Retail price was around £1000 new. You got a bargain!

 

Bit like the covid jab then?

 

Perhaps more like taking remdesivir: most people take a jab to prevent a disease not in the hope that they have one and will consequently now feel better.

 

Slightly concerned here ?.... lol. I have only one socket for power amp, so have one of my Michell Alectos plugged into ordinary socket on isotek. Been in a wk now and good as gold, but then thats presumably what they said about the titanic !!. Anyway, what do you think guys ?..... I m handing out disclaimers like confetti !!!