Shunyata Research

[David A]

Hi Damon. Pim here at the back of the class. 

I see power supply a bit like tap water; if it's clean it doesn't need to be filtered. You're using a dedicated power circuit, which could be quite clean, but then you plugged in a fluorescent light. Fluorescents cause interference in power circuits.

So what I'm wondering is this; did the Denali / AQ 1000 clean the dirt you added with the fluorescent light or did they clean the dedicated circuit regardless of the light? It would be easy to check. Just unplug the light and listen for differences again.

The reason I'm asking is because I'm interested to see how clean or dirty a dedicated circuit can be. I've installed dedicated circuits in our new living room but the room has such enormous echo I can't possibly hear any difference in my system. Getting the room to sound any good isn't going to happen anytime soon ( or ever   ) so I've decided to dedicate a bedroom to my hifi in the future and just go all out in it. I'm just wondering if I should put in another dedicated circuit or just go with a Denali.

Pim,

I don't have an AQ Niagara or a Denali (I'm waiting for the Denali to be released in Australia) but I am using an Isotek Aquarius and I have a dedicated circuit with nothing plugged into it other than the Isotek which is feeding my system.

I can remember the dedicated circuit making an improvement when I had it installed several years ago and the Aquarius makes an improvement on the dedicated circuit. The dedicated circuit simply helps isolate the system from all of the other electrical devices in the house but it does nothing to clean up the power coming off the grid so if you have problems with the power coming from your mains line the dedicated circuit is still going to let any noise on your mains line go through to your system. You'll just add less noise from the rest of the house.

A lot depends on what you're getting from the mains. I'm in suburban Brisbane and you're in northern NSW. Depending on where you are and where your nearest mains substation is you may well have less noise on your mains line than I have in mine, simply because there's probably a lot more people and industry connected to the line in my area. If that's the case you'd see less of an improvement with a power conditioner than I do.

The other advantage of a conditioner is that good conditioners isolate each component plugged into the conditioner from each other and I wonder whether that may contribute as much or more to the improvement I hear as does the cleaning up of the power from my mains.

So basically, in my experience, a dedicated line definitely helps, a power conditioner helps, and the combination of a dedicated line and a power conditioner is better than a dedicated line on its own. What I can't say is that a dedicated line plus a power conditioner is better than the power conditioner on its own because I've never tried that, I had the dedicated line installed before I got a power conditioner. I added a power conditioner to a dedicated line but I haven't added a dedicated line to a power conditioner.

I think a lot depends on the quality of your local power and a lot also depends on the quality of the power conditioner and when it comes to the quality of the power conditioner things will depend on how it handles the power being fed to it plus also how well it isolates the components plugged into it from each other.