Power conditioners hurt the sound?

[Verdinut]

Thanks for the info, I'm gonna sit put on everything. Let's just call it a moment of insanity.
Hey because I don't want to start a separate thread I have a speaker/amp power question.
I recently switched from Def Tech speakers to RSL of which I could not be more happy by the way. Any way the Def Tech's were rated high as far as the wattage they can take. The RSL speakers are 25-125. My Parasound amp is 140 per channel all channels driven. Its a beast of an amp. Now from what I understand too low, crappy voltage hurts speakers more than too much wattage. But what exactly could hurt my speakers with this amp? Like I only listen at a max of -20 and honestly have no idea how people listen at 0 reference. If I did try it at reference would that be enough to blow these speakers? Just so I know the limits here? Thanks.

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Low voltage never hurts speakers. It's high wattage beyond the level which the speaker is designed for, or a distorting solid state amplifier that will.

With your Parasound, you could damage your speakers if you were continuously driving them at high SPL, like at 100 watts or over. A power of 125 watts is probably the maximum input which they would take as a peak SPL for a second or so.

 

[Hetfield]

Low voltage never hurts speakers. It's high wattage beyond the level which the speaker is designed for, or a distorting solid state amplifier that will.

With your Parasound, you could damage your speakers if you were continuously driving them at high SPL, like at 100 watts or over. A power of 125 watts is probably the maximum input which they would take as a peak SPL for a second or so.

So be careful I guess, do not turn up too high like I already do. -20 is about the top of what I will every listen to music and movies.
What I mean about low wattage was I thought I heard that when an amp is pushed too far and creates distortion that will hurt your speakers even though you aren't technically over the speaker wattage.

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[Verdinut]

So be careful I guess, do not turn up too high like I already do. -20 is about the top of what I will every listen to music and movies.
What I mean about low wattage was I thought I heard that when an amp is pushed too far and creates distortion that will hurt your speakers even though you aren't technically over the speaker wattage.

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A clipping amplifier would usually destroy tweeters, not woofers or mid-range drivers.

 

[TankTop5]

Eat at Scoma's
View attachment 43296

You could do worse. PG&E hasn’t blown up much on the water FWIW, East Bay OTH... luckily they have some good help lately, at least with their high voltage.

 

[panteragstk]

Go to a live music event and look for the big generator trailers outside- they usually have Furman on them, for a reason. Panamax and Furman are part of the same corporation and have been for years. How is APC's design more reputable than Furman/Panamax? My Panamax has been working great for well over five years and it has shut the system off because of spike. Never lost a piece of equipment and I was in the room where I installed a Furman- lightning struck just outside of the house and I heard a snapping sound where the ADT cellular device is mounted- I noticed that one of its lights was blinking afterward, but the AV system, which was operating at the time, never missed a beat. I like APC, but I doubt it's really better than the other two. Nothing wrong with TrippLite, either.

I sold live sound for a few years and Furman and Panamax are there because they have features that live sound folks like, not because they are the "best". They make products SPECIFICALLY for live sound and recording studios. APC doesn't market their stuff that way so they aren't really sold all that much from the live audio retailers (this may have changed since then). As you said, Furman (panamax) is made for live sound and work great in all those places that have nasty power or generators. I'd own some if they weren't so expensive. Balanced power sounds very interesting, but pointless since I have good power.

Having said that, Panamax (Furman) make excellent products just like APC does. I have an APC "power conditioner" with a UPS in my living room and it's basically an expensive version of their normal 1500VA UPS. I have one of those in my office and a Tripplite UPS for the theater. A lot of them can be found cheap on ebay. All you have to do is replace the batteries which are very common and aren't expensive.

None of them sound any different from one another at all.

 

[highfigh]

I sold live sound for a few years and Furman and Panamax are there because they have features that live sound folks like, not because they are the "best". They make products SPECIFICALLY for live sound and recording studios. APC doesn't market their stuff that way so they aren't really sold all that much from the live audio retailers (this may have changed since then). As you said, Furman (panamax) is made for live sound and work great in all those places that have nasty power or generators. I'd own some if they weren't so expensive. Balanced power sounds very interesting, but pointless since I have good power.

Having said that, Panamax (Furman) make excellent products just like APC does. I have an APC "power conditioner" with a UPS in my living room and it's basically an expensive version of their normal 1500VA UPS. I have one of those in my office and a Tripplite UPS for the theater. A lot of them can be found cheap on ebay. All you have to do is replace the batteries which are very common and aren't expensive.

None of them sound any different from one another at all.

I'm not sure why reliability for live venues wouldn't be a bad thing for resi use.

Lots of options, too much hype and not enough accurate info being spewed online- I think it would be safe to list criteria for these as:

- Limited input voltage- best for equipment to shut down or take over extremely quickly in the event of a brownout or surge/spike and I don't consider 5 mS fast.

- Reliability- ties with limited input voltage for #1

- Adequate number of outlets- at least 8

- 12V trigger is nice to have

- Voice/Data protection, if needed.

- Some kind of fail safe- many of these aren't sacrificial, but if the sensing circuitry is good enough, lightning shouldn't be a problem (lightning being a giant wild card)

 

[Movie2099]

I sold live sound for a few years and Furman and Panamax are there because they have features that live sound folks like, not because they are the "best". They make products SPECIFICALLY for live sound and recording studios. APC doesn't market their stuff that way so they aren't really sold all that much from the live audio retailers (this may have changed since then). As you said, Furman (panamax) is made for live sound and work great in all those places that have nasty power or generators. I'd own some if they weren't so expensive. Balanced power sounds very interesting, but pointless since I have good power.

Having said that, Panamax (Furman) make excellent products just like APC does. I have an APC "power conditioner" with a UPS in my living room and it's basically an expensive version of their normal 1500VA UPS. I have one of those in my office and a Tripplite UPS for the theater. A lot of them can be found cheap on ebay. All you have to do is replace the batteries which are very common and aren't expensive.

None of them sound any different from one another at all.

What do you think about AudioQuests power conditioners? the Niagara 3000,5000 and 7000. Heard they're top of the line and "improve" sound.

 

[highfigh]

What do you think about AudioQuests power conditioners? the Niagara 3000,5000 and 7000. Heard they're top of the line and "improve" sound.

Power isn't part of the signal path.

 

[Movie2099]

Power isn't part of the signal path.

I have always laughed when I heard people say the power conditioner made their speakers come alive. Haha. And you know AudioQuest products just make everybody's gear 10x better!

 

[panteragstk]

I'm not sure why reliability for live venues wouldn't be a bad thing for resi use.

Lots of options, too much hype and not enough accurate info being spewed online- I think it would be safe to list criteria for these as:

- Limited input voltage- best for equipment to shut down or take over extremely quickly in the event of a brownout or surge/spike and I don't consider 5 mS fast.

- Reliability- ties with limited input voltage for #1

- Adequate number of outlets- at least 8

- 12V trigger is nice to have

- Voice/Data protection, if needed.

- Some kind of fail safe- many of these aren't sacrificial, but if the sensing circuitry is good enough, lightning shouldn't be a problem (lightning being a giant wild card)

I think all of my UPS have that and work great. I've got so many it's hard to keep track, but my minimum requirements are pretty much the same as your list. Even the cheap APC units I have do all of that. That's why I like them. Plus, they're pretty much the king of the IT world so support for monitoring them is wide.

Most USP can be monitored, but APC has much more support than any other I've used. They do upcharge for their "home theater" UPS that are no different from their SMB line other than looks. They do the same thing for the rackmount versions too though.

Honestly, I've yet to use a "bad" UPS brand and haven't ever had to replace an actual UPS.

 

[Verdinut]

What do you think about AudioQuests power conditioners? the Niagara 3000,5000 and 7000. Heard they're top of the line and "improve" sound.

Personally, I would stay away from any Audioquest product. They are very popular with audiophools because these believe all their BS publicity and their products are very expensive. Their advertising on those Niagara power conditioners is a misleading false representation. No, they won't improve the sound of any equipment.

If you want a good affordable power conditioner, stick with reliable brands such as APC or Furman products. I am using the APC H15 at present, but next time I need a new power conditioner, I'll get a APC UPS backup product for my HT system.

 

[panteragstk]

What do you think about AudioQuests power conditioners? the Niagara 3000,5000 and 7000. Heard they're top of the line and "improve" sound.

I would guess that Furman probably makes better stuff. AudioQuest is known to introduce coloring to the sound and that's the opposite of improving sound. There's another thread I started about a cable they charge an insane amount for pretty much being worse than the absolute cheapest competitor. I'll look for it.

 

[Hetfield]

What do you guys think of something like this even though expensive if you have a hum issue? I have a slight hum, I cannot hear it from MLP but I can when I put my ear right up to the speakers. What do you think of this?

Ebtech Hum X Voltage Hum Filter | zZounds

Plug your amp's power cord into the Ebtech Hum X before the wall outlet, and kiss ground loop hum goodbye -- while keeping your amp safely grounded.

www.zzounds.com

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[mazersteven]

What happened to Belkin? Did they just fall off the map?

 

[panteragstk]

What do you guys think of something like this even though expensive if you have a hum issue? I have a slight hum, I cannot hear it from MLP but I can when I put my ear right up to the speakers. What do you think of this?

Ebtech Hum X Voltage Hum Filter | zZounds

Plug your amp's power cord into the Ebtech Hum X before the wall outlet, and kiss ground loop hum goodbye -- while keeping your amp safely grounded.

www.zzounds.com

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That's probably not a ground hum (which I probably have in my subs, but haven't had time to fix), but just the noise floor of your amp. Some of the high end power conditioner reviews I've read say they can help that, but I'm talking about things like the Furman balanced power units, not the "cheap" HT stuff you see at Best Buy. Even the APC ones that aren't equipped with a UPS are glorified surge protectors. They are better than a typical surge protector, of course, but won't help with things like hum, noise floor, voltage regulation, etc.

 

[mazersteven]

I was always under the impression that a power conditioner can't help with noise floor. I thought that power conditioners only help stabilized power going to your equipment.

 

[Hetfield]

That's probably not a ground hum (which I probably have in my subs, but haven't had time to fix), but just the noise floor of your amp. Some of the high end power conditioner reviews I've read say they can help that, but I'm talking about things like the Furman balanced power units, not the "cheap" HT stuff you see at Best Buy. Even the APC ones that aren't equipped with a UPS are glorified surge protectors. They are better than a typical surge protector, of course, but won't help with things like hum, noise floor, voltage regulation, etc.

I think, I think but don't know for sure but I think the hum is from my amp.

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[Trell]

I was kinda thinking of adding one but after a lot of research I keep seeing that it could hurt the sound especially the dynamics of the HT. Then I started reading about power regenerators from PS Audio which are just a bit expensive.
What do you think about this?

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If it's very, very expensive your dynamics will be astounding! And don't listen to the spoil sport brats that needs to test this blind folded! WTF! Don't judge a book by the cover, I say, and blindness clearly does not help!

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[panteragstk]

I was always under the impression that a power conditioner can't help with noise floor. I thought that power conditioners only help stabilized power going to your equipment.

Most, if not all, power conditioners won't help with noise floor, but the reviews of some of the balanced power units said that they did. I'll have to track one down, but these were legit reviews for studio equipment, not home use so those guys are way more picky than most of us are. Plus, I seem to remember the monitors used were quite expensive. We're probably talking about the absolute last thing you can do to eek that extra 1% out of your system.

I'll admit, if I had the cash, I'd try one if I had higher end equipment. Mine wouldn't really benefit from something like that.

The marketing for most of the power conditioners is that they "clean" the power coming from the wall before it gets to your equipment. The thing is, the power supply in the equipment is already doing that to an extant, so what's the point? That, and the voltage regulation from a UPS that produces a "pure sine wave" is supposed to be as good as it gets. Tons of UPS have this feature and aren't expensive, but won't change anything about the way things sound.

Someone like @PENG or @TLS Guy can explain it better than I, but the general consensus is that power conditioners aren't going to do much to "help" your sound save for very specific circumstances.

 

[panteragstk]

I think, I think but don't know for sure but I think the hum is from my amp.

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It might be, but that just might be the noise floor of that particular amp. Without actually hearing it, it's hard to tell.