Power conditioner, yes or nay?

riffguy

riffguy

Member
Hye guys. Currently im using axe fx ii, matrix gt800fx and line 6 g90. My concern is, must i certainly using a power conditioner?and if yes, why?im thinking not to use it because im trying to stick with 4u rackcase. Thanks in foward.


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I have one but I don't have a power amp or wireless so it is a no brainer. It helps keep everything patched up, plus the rack lights do come in handy.
 
It will prevent your rig being affected by RF and EMI in venues that may have dimmer circuits on their lights etc. I'd recommend one just for that.
 
I like my Furman P-1800 PFR ... one switch to rule them all :evil

It sweetened up the tone a tiny bit. It's not necessary but it will protect your gear and make your sound more consistent from venue to venue.

What's nice is it has two banks so you can isolate your digital gear from your analog gear and it also has two high amperage plugs for power amps.

The spacing takes walwart plugs so all in all a good piece of kit.
 
It's a personal choice... some swear by power conditioners, others want surge protection, and others could care less. I'm in the camp for surge protection but find rack ones offensively priced so honestly I use cheaper power strip style ones for our racks but all to their own.

Cheers
 
slinky005 said:
Has absolutely no effect on tone.
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Voltage regulation maybe, but power conditioning does. It got rid of some of the graininess ... if I had to describe the difference, I would say it was very light but it's like using an overdrive pedal to smooth things out a bit.

If you have no experience with this unit, then make sure your comments can be verified factually ... Noise Filtration > LiFT offers AC power filtering to ensure clean power for unequaled audio & video clarity. Clear Tone Technology provides tuned filtering circuits engineered for instrument amplifiers to provide a clean and consistent tone.

I should add, we are talking about two things here. Voltage regulation, which protects you from voltage spikes and maintains a consistent voltage for protection; and power conditioning which is the cream on top of the cake. Voltage regulation is what most people prefer this technology for, but if your going to go 2/3 the way, why not go all the way? So sweeten your tone if you want to.

A funny aside, the Furman emits EMF up, so the unit is on the bottom of my rack upside down. Flipping it did make a difference because my power amps were directly above it :)
 
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maschoff said:
Voltage regulation maybe, but power conditioning does. It got rid of some of the graininess ... if I had to describe the difference, I would say it was very light but it's like using an overdrive pedal to smooth things out a bit.

If you have no experience with this unit, then make sure your comments can be verified factually ... Noise Filtration > LiFT offers AC power filtering to ensure clean power for unequaled audio & video clarity. Clear Tone Technology provides tuned filtering circuits engineered for instrument amplifiers to provide a clean and consistent tone.

I should add, we are talking about two things here. Voltage regulation, which protects you from voltage spikes and maintains a consistent voltage for protection; and power conditioning which is the cream on top of the cake. Voltage regulation is what most people prefer this technology for, but if your going to go 2/3 the way, why not go all the way? So sweeten your tone if you want to.

A funny aside, the Furman emits EMF up, so the unit is on the bottom of my rack upside down. Flipping it did make a difference because my power amps were directly above it :)
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Marketing nonsense.

A power conditioner will not affect your tone, other than maybe removing some hum.
 
ALaz502 said:
Marketing nonsense.

A power conditioner will not affect your tone, other than maybe removing some hum.
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I tend to agree with this one. However, power issues can cause some weird things to happen in gear. I'd say post some clips both with and without the conditioner and we can do some blind listening tests.
 
I ran without a surge protector / power conditioner once. ONCE!

I know..."power conditioner", but these days you can get dual purpose units, so why not.

It's literally electronic Russian roulette if you choose to go unprotected, regardless of how many times you check plugs (yes, I keep a plug tester in my gear box). One little blip on the grid and your gear can smoke check in milliseconds. I speak from experience, but some have to learn on their own and will inevitably cry fowl and say I'm full of poo. I lost my one and only power amp the night before our gig at SxSW in '92. I ended up having to use our PA amp and spent the morning of the gig tweaking my ADA MP1/Quad presets to compensate for the tonal differences.

All it took for me was losing that one expensive piece of rack gear. I've never plugged another piece of gear directly into an outlet since. Not once, and never will.

Tonal differences? For me, yep. In my old house I had horrid electrical wiring due to the age of the house, combined with Verizon and TXU Electric constantly cutting each others cables or stepping on toes. I had an electrician come out and provide a recommendation. After doing everything on his list (at great expense), I found the best solution FOR ME was a Furman PL-PLUS C to help remove some of the bad hum in my lines. That's not subjective, that's fact as I experienced it. My new home is 20 years younger than my old house with much higher quality electrical wiring and design to limit EMF. Even so, my Furman will never come out of my rack or my power chain.

YMMV, if you dare. :D
 
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maschoff said:
... more people, talking about stuff they have no experience with ... buy one, try it, then talk to me.
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I've owned most everything on the market at one point or another. Power conditioning does NOT affect the tone with digital processors. Key term here being "DIGITAL". The Axe is basically a computer, and like a computer its all or nothing with regards to its power needs. Its not going to start magically processing those bits, the 1's and 0's differently based on the input current. Your not going to get an output sequence of bits going from 1000100010001.... to 100110001001 because of supply changes during processing. CPU's simply don't work that way.

What it can do however, is model some effects of things like voltage on things like a power amp. There are a number of parameters you can tweak to account for subtle changes in AC current etc.


Think of it this way, ignoring any power conversation strategies your laptop may employee when running from the battery, does it perform any differently when plugged into the wall ? No it does not.

Its not like spell check is suddenly missing every 1 out of 1000th word because its getting "dirty" power. Its not like Photoshop is dropping every ten-thousandth pixel. And its not like your Axe II is going to model an amp any differently. These things either work, or they don't.

Your not going to sweeten your tone by slightly starving the Axe for voltage etc.

Sounds like you've fallen for marketing hype, which is just that, stuff created by folks in a marketing dept. Not engineers, maybe not even musicians. But rather people who's job it is to convince you why you "need" something, even if that "need" is merely a creation of the ad man.

Its modern day "snakeoil". Its selling a pill to prevent people from getting a made up ailment. "Axidosis" could be a made up condition, but sure enough some people would gladly line up to spend $99 a month for a bottle of those pills because they don't want to get "Axidosis", and if you give a list of imaginary symptoms, plenty of people will swear on their lives that they have "Axidosis".

Power supply filtering is beneficial to hardware amps and surge protectors are wise for all digital devices, but no magical power conditioning is going to affect the tone of a digital modeling unit.
 
This is true about digital devices, but remember the input and output sections of the Axe are analog. Anything before the AD converters (special sauce...) and after the DA converters is still prone to analog interference issues.
 
My PC soundcard sometimes makes a pop when the fridge starts, or bathroom lights are turned on/off. Power conditioner removed that pop, so at least they do something. I also like the lights in the rack.
 
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