Tweaker's Asylum

Posted by Covariant (A) on June 10, 2002 at 13:52:15

In Reply to: Balanced Power Isolation Transformers - some questions posted by rwalton on June 09, 2002 at 19:14:42:

I would recommend going to a friendly audio showroom and ask to hear a system with and without a passive line conditioner. In my experience, the conditioners were obtrusive, choking back the audio performance. Unless you have no other alternative, I would keep inductors out of the power path.

A lot of people really like active power regenerators (PS audio for example). They do not impeade musical transients, if fact response is inproved because inductance in the house wire is effectively bypassed. Of course, because of cost, most people only put their front end on the regenerator. I ran a dedicated line of 10/2 romex to my breaker box, and am very satisfied with the performance.

If a ground loop problem is driving the desire for the isolation transformers, I would really put a lot of effort into solving the ground loop problem. The work will be rewarded many times over.