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Power Source Questions? (1 Viewer)

Steve_L

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Nov 8, 2004
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All, yesterday I was up at BB buying my new Pioneer VSX 1014-K. Since I was there I got to talking to one of the sales guys, as I was also listening to the Kilpsch F-3s (which I am considering).

In any event, the sales guy (just slightly older than sales-kid) started to sell me one of these "Stage 3 Monster Cable Power Systems", at $399. This wasn't in my budget, and I'm an old hippie with a knowledge base on this stuff from 1970 and we didn't talk too much about the need for this stuff back then.

So, he sells me this stuff based on the value proposition that:

A: It gives you cleaner power, and eliminates hiss, caused by things like furnaces, refrigerators and air conditioners kicking in.

B: Surge protection caused by the same type of other electrical devices kicking in, or actual power company surges that might hurt my valuable equipment.

I was finally unsold, by the end of this discussion and decided to come back here and ask youse guyz whas-up with this stuff? I mean, I can see the value of just having a nice neat fancy power strip to manage all these ugly cables, and the surge protection sounds like it might be of some value, but not $400 worth of value!! At least not for me when I'm in the process of just building the HT in the first place.

As far as the power noise filtering is concerned, I am thinking that all the big capacitors and inductors in the receiver power supply are there to smooth out all that power stuff in the first place. Secondly, I'm not such a discernible listener (at least not now) that a bit of transient noise is going to revolt me, if something does kick in and cause that symptom on occasion. (this assumes it really is solving a problem)

So, what gives, is all of this power management stuff really important, or is it just to give audio-geeks more pretty red lights to look at and impress your drinking buddies? In other words, add margin for places like BB, after you get the great deal on the needed stuff like a 1014 and some F-3s.

Thanks for any and all input. I looked around for a similar thread before I posted this, but didn't find one.
 

Wayne A. Pflughaupt

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If you had a problem with surges in your neighborhood, you would probably already know it.

For instance, at the place a friend of mine used to live, every year or two some component in his system would die a strange and mysterious death. He lived in a rural location with overhead power lines, which are fairly susceptible to weather conditions and the like. He’s been living in a late-model subdivision with underground power service the past 8 years and he hasn’t lost a component – save an ancient VCR that probably died of old age.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt
 

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