As of the last few days, I've managed to acquire a few line conditioners & cords to test in my system which comproises of:

Jolida JD100A w/ 12AX7's electro harmonix gold pin
Totem Arros
Grant Fidelity A88 KT-88 Tube amplifier (65wpc UL 32 Triode)
Using Tara Labs RSC Prime 1000 Bi-wired
Eichman eXpress 6 series 2 IC's
Grant Fidelity PC 1.5 power cord

So far my system has been operating great, but I've always been a skeptic of power conditioners
I've heard systems been hampered by some poor power cables & line conditioners (such as Monster AV)

Well anyways, this past weekend, I've manged to try out 2 lines of power conditioners from Grant Fidelity, & have scored myself a PS Audio Juice Bar

Also I managed to grab a few Cardas, Nordst and Blacksands cables for the weekend

Everything but the Grant Fidelity power boxes and one of the Ian's PC 1.5's has had hours on it.

My impressions are as the following:
All the power cords that I have tried, appear to do things differently.
To me, that doesn't mean anything is "wrong" but different and I feel is subjected to the listeners opinions and musical tastes.

For me the most noticable differences in the "straight" wire to wire battle were on the Source (My Jolida JD100A)
The AMP, being a "tube" amp... I think is less finicky or so it appears to the differences in the cables, as long as they are good quality filtered cables.

Differences ranged from soundstage width, depth, separation & vocal richness (female vocals in particular)
However, to me... it's hard to declare a Winner, with the exception that I am very particular to the Grant Fidelity PC 1.5 and that the Blacksands Violet exert the same qualities, but with slight variations in brightness in certain instruments.

@ 150 CAD, the Grant Fidelity cable to me is a "bargin" and I haven't been convinced by any of the tested cables to upgrade

Now, let me tell you about my power setup..
I live in a townhome of which I have alot of shared recepitcles on the same circuit.
Now this will "bold' issues if there are inconsitant power draw.. but I've been good with keeping only the things I need plugged in.

I've upped the breaker to a hospital grade 30A and upgraded my Hi-Fi recepitcle with a Cooper hospital grade (brass connectors)

This upgrade was an immediate upgrade, as everything seemed "cleaned-up"
In fact to the point where... I've not heard my source sound quite as good, as compared to the out of the wall recepticle
Also my old DLP rear projection w/ Motorola HD box is giving me the most grain free & best black contrasting picture.

However knowing the sensitivity of "tube" amps I decided that I needed "surge" protection & or filtering (if the cable isn't enough) -- maybe conditioning

Well from trying out the PS Audio Juicebox and comparing them to 2 "new power products" from Grant Fidelity.. I was sold on the GF "better" box.

This box offered the most "transparent" power signal, yeilding the same quality of picture on my HDTV and Amplifier

However when it comes down to the source... it only "slightly" compresses the width of the soundstage

Lucky for me, I have a Volex 17504 unshielded/unfiltered power cord available, as again that was another noticable improvement to the power box.

I noticed this... when high quality "filtered" power cables, i.e. GF 1.5, Nordst, Blacksands, etc.. are plugged in series...
meaning pluged into the box, then into the equipment
There were serious detriments to the sound..
Usually collapsed soundstage width, less depth and too much bass being excentuated.

So anyways...
The only couple things on my mind are whether I should be running my source directly from the power recepticle or through the conditioner?
The sound is very simular, but the width is definately larger and I do like it, but I really don't want to risk damaging my equipment.

Any reasons why running high quality power cords in series results in the symptoms I'm hearing?

I'm wondering if you are connecting several items on the power bar/box? Several different equipment connected to a common outlet can have the equipments interfering with each other, and that's especially apparent when you are connecting a filtered/choked power cable to it. As RF filter works both ways, it will also prevent RF noises of your various equipment from escaping the power bar/box, and will be better able to interfere with other equipments that's also on the same power bar/box.


That's my guess at the moment, please do tell if there are other equipments on the same box.

Do you have separate dedicated power lines, with thicker cooper diameter for power amp lines? That's essential.

The recepticle has 2 circuits attached to it, as I decided not to run each dedicated.
However that's easy enough to change.

Whilst testing, I only had my audio componants plugged into the power filter

Still to my ears, the best sound is my source direct to the power recepticle.
My amp? Well for some reason, it always seems to sound quite consistant regardless of power, as long as it's power cord is as of a decent quality.

The way i look at it, you better invest in modding your amp, especially in the power section and use high quality caps! I tested it extensively and i found that modding the amp completely gave much better results then using a powerfilter...the only version that might yiled good results might be the regenerating powerplants, but they are really expensive for the good ones! For that kind of money you can spend loads of money to get the best out of your amp, without filtering...i had more details after the mod without filters then with filters without the mod! So, clealry good filtering inside the amp works better then any expensive patch before the amplifier!

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It might be that your amp allready has good internal filtering, then a filter won't add anything, in most cases, they are the obstackle in the path.....taking detail away, as i found out through intensive testing...tried every combination and the amp straight into the power receptikle always gave the best results! it all comes to the fact how well your amp inside filters ( with high quality caps) the incomming power...if you mod the power sections, ac and dc in the amp, you yield the best results! Clean powwer all over, with detailed clear sound!

Don't waste your money on expensive useless powerfilters or regenerating powerplants, costing 2-3000 dollars but make sure your powersections in the amp are up to notch...this can be done much cheaper then any powerplant!

Well, talking about amp modding, here's one trick for modding some of the amps that is easy and FREE... All you need is a bit of time, a screwdriver and a soldering iron (don't even need solder if you are not planning to change the solder on the amp.)



This is an amp that I previously owned, a Proton AM-300 integrated amp with about 40W continuous power and about 120W peak for very short period of time.

As you can see the transistors are soldered on surface mount style, and thus there is no through holes for the legs to achieve guaranteed solid contact. How do you guarantee solid contact between the transistor's leg and PCB?

Simple, melt the solder, and use the screw driver to force the transistor's leg onto the PCB, when you feel you have achieved contact between the two. Remove soldering iron, wait a few secs for the solder to cool, and then remove the screw driver. If you look carefully, you will be able to see that the soldering joint in the photo above all show a large round mark, and that's the mark that my hex screw driver makes

I cannot say how much difference it makes, as it is done as part of the project to refresh and upgrade this amp. However, I feel ti is just good practice to always try to achieve good metal to metal contact and not having to pass the bulk of the current through a blob of solder.

Try Transparent power isolators. A good filter always upgrades, unless there's a big problem on your system. Or the filter that you use is bad (like many) and downgrade.

When I added a Noise Harvester between my mono block amps it made a bigger difference than separating them with the Nano Crystalline filters of a Quintet Power Center. You could try a Noise Harvester and plug it into the JuiceBar, it's the cheapest way to reduce the interference of the components.

I have many P300 Power Plants and they made it sound muddy. It got less muddy when plugging both components into the same P300 because it increased the distortion and brightness.
P300 is only good when using the MWave4 setting which tones down the midrange and highs to emphasized the low-end. MWave4 made the biggest difference for Toroidal transformers. Bass was crazy, especially when using a dedicated P300 for each mono block amp.
When switching to the MWave1 setting the bass was gone and the highs were airy and bright (it was night and day). Switching from P300 to Premier Power Plant (Premier only has MWave1) made a huge difference in transparency. Premier with MWave1 is better than MWave4 of P300 even when the low-end is empty, but the low-end can be fixed with Virtual Dynamics Genesis power cords.

Nordost Valhalla power cords didn't work well with MWave1 because they both had the same open, thin and airy sound signature which removed the bass. MWave4 with Nordost power cords are the best match because they are the opposites. The sound becomes colored but it's still very special.

After years of experiments I have found that sinewave is best for stock power cables. Premier Power Plant with MWave1 is best for Virtual Dynamics power cables. And P300 Power Plant with MWave4 is best for Nordost power cables.