You’ve been hearing a fuss about power conditioners for a very long time. You’re being bombarded with different power conditioner ads that claim to improve the sound quality of your audio system. That makes you wonder, do power conditioners improve sound quality? For real?
To answer this question, I’ve gathered extensive research on power conditioners. I’ve dissected their capabilities to figure out how they impact sound systems.
Give this article a good read to learn whether power conditioners can actually improve sound quality or not. If they can, how do they do it?
Yes, power conditioners improve sound quality. They are capable of cleaning any marred noise in the 50-60 Hz sine wave frequency. They take out all the line noise produced by electrical components. So, the sound becomes clearer and more accurate.
Again, power conditioners prevent electronic products from being damaged due to the main supply surges. In short, you can say power conditioners improve sound quality.
4 Benefits of Using Power Conditioners to Improve Sound Quality
If you get into the details, power conditioners take the main supply and convert it to an AC signal. This newer version of the power supply is cleaner than the previous sound quality.
Here’s how power conditioners do it:
1) Power Conditioner Reduces Noise
When an audio system has excessive noise, the sound quality drops. It happens due to power distortions in the electrical components of the audio system.
What a power conditioner does is it reduces the noise level in those low-end sound systems.
You can understand this difference better in high-end audio setups. By lowering the noise level, a power conditioner makes the sound clearer than before.
2) Power Conditioner Cleans Up Frequency Ranges
Now, there’s another reason your audio system can sound noisy. When there’s unwanted electronic distortion in the sine waves of a sound, the audio quality becomes marred. In this case, power conditioners swoop in and remove all the distortions from the frequency.
Especially, the 50-60Hz frequency range is more susceptible to distortion. Power conditioners convert those signals to AC and improve the overall sound quality.
3) Power Conditioner Lowers Noise Floor of Amps
Some amplifiers tend to have noisy power rails. It happens for two major reasons. These reasons are listed below:
In fact, even if the two causes get combined, they’ll produce the same noise issue. Luckily, power conditioners are able to reduce the floor noise of the amps. But there’s a catch. It only works with tube amplifiers. This means they can only clear out the distortions from bigger chords.
If the amp isn’t too big, the power conditioner might make your amp sound wimpy.
4) Power Conditioner Separates Noise Sources
Now, when you’re recording or listening to music from your sound system, sometimes you’ll notice the sound source overlapping each other. It creates an annoying noise that impacts the overall experience.
With power conditioners, you can isolate those noise sources. This is more effective for SWM-powered devices. The conditioners assists in dynamics, sound imaging, and coherence at the same time.
In summary, power conditioners do the following:
So, you can definitely say that power conditioners really improve sound quality.
Which Components Do Power Conditioners Help the Most?
Filtering the audio, power conditioners help the following components the most:
- Preamps (Table/phono)
- CD player
- Streamer
It’s because these components have low-level signals. Since they consume less power, it’s easy for a power conditioner to reduce floor noise. It’s like an overall positive boost in the audio quality.
However, keep in mind that it may degrade the functionality of some areas. For example, it can lower the high-frequency response in the components mentioned above.
When Doesn’t a Power Conditioner Improve Sound Quality?
Though power conditioners improve the sound quality of equipment, they can’t act the same always. You should be aware when these conditioners can’t improve the sound quality.
Here are two segments describing the negative sides of a power conditioner.
Different Models of Power Conditioners
Not all power conditioners have the same capacity. It depends on the brand and models. Each brand focuses on different criteria and markets its power conditioners.
For example, the Furman PL-PLUS C 15 Amp power conditioner isn’t ideal for recording studios. But you can record easily with the Furman M-8×2 8 Outlet Power Conditioner. You can check out a list of the top 7 Furman high-capacity power conditioners.
Again, some conditioners support amps but others don’t.
Using Modern Amplifiers
As you’ve read earlier, power conditioners work best for large tube amps. But there’s an exception here. Power conditioners don’t improve the sound quality of modern amplifiers.
State-of-the-art amps or modern amplifiers have switch-mode power supplies. These amps pick any noise-ridden main signal from the switch-power mode.
Power conditioners can’t remove these noise signals from the amp’s frequency. So, they are unable to improve the audio quality of modern amplifiers.
What Else Does a Power Conditioner Do for an Audio?
Apart from improving the audio quality, a power conditioner also act as an insurance policy for your audio system. It can protect your audio gears in the following ways:
Overall, power conditioners do more than improve sound quality.
However end of the explanation, what do you think? Does it really improve sound quality? As you’ve read this far of this article, you got the answer. Keep in mind that power conditioners aren’t compatible with all equipment. The quality also differs from brand to brand. Hopefully, this information will assist you while buying a power conditioner.
