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Power Filter killed my Hi Hat?

Posted by Joonnaass (A) on July 30, 2013 at 01:04:32

I was having some serious transformer hum issues with an Audio Analogue Maestro amp that I'm currently trying out at home (the hum couldn't be heard through the speakers, it came directly from the amp). The sound from my speakers was fabulous, but that hum was really getting on my nerve.

My local hifi dealer recommended that I try a power line filter, the ISOL-8 PowerLine Axis to be more specific. This has a DC and sure enough, connecting the filter reduced the hum to barely noticeable levels (I could still hear it with my ear against the top of the amp).
At first I thought that the sound was improved. It was cleaner and more three dimensional. I felt that maybe PRAT had taken a hit, but I attributed that to the cleaner sound.

I now did a quick A-B test using Miles Davis "The Cellar Door Sessions". Listening to the drums at the beginning of Directions (can't quite remember which disk this was, but probably three or four) the difference was quite startling. Startling enough to give me pause - and this is where I get confused. With the Axis in line there is a tremendous sense of space and I can almost hear the exact placement of the drums in the drum set, it was also very easy to differentiate between the different drums. Very nice I remember myself thinking. I then removed the Axis and played the same song again. Wow! What's that hi hat doing there? Cymbals? All of a sudden the hi hat and cymbals became very prominent in the mix. The sound is also more propulsive, but at the same time less relaxed. I switched back to using the Axis and sure enough, the hi hat and the cymbals where still there but muffled and buried deeper in the mix.
So what's going on? The difference is really startling, it sounds like two completely different tracks. To quote Stereophile; "If one of these is right, the other must be wrong".

So which is it? Does the power filter kill dynamics and attenuate treble or is this the sound of clean power?

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