Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater HT on the DIY channel - Interesting

Aw Phooie!

Well.....guess it was a lead...

.....that lead nowhere, darn.

Hmmmmm.....

That Brick Wall unit is a good looking device with very good reviews! Thanx for the link!!

What it does, it does well! What I "think" I may need, though, is something that protects more on the low voltage side.

The Wife hit me with a real goodie this morning also(she pays the utility bills)She informed me that, when we bought this house last summer, that the electric bill had something about "Surge Protection" in it's listings! And that we've been paying for it for the last year. Sure enough, upon closer examination of the power box out back, there's a funny little box attatched with some silly little lights on it that I just never paid attention to before!

Turns out we've been paying the power company EXTRA to cover ourselves for the poor service supplied by the power company! But for the inverse of where my concerns lie!!

Now don't THAT beat all!?

Guys, a line conditioner can be a good thing, depending on how crappie your power company is.. And or how large the load is on your local power plant, vs the power plants ability to produce power. Line conditioners are designed to maintain a constant voltage/ frequency. The frequency part isn’t the big part.. it’s the voltage part that you must worry about.. When the city wakes up everyone turns on electronic devices, and creates a larger draw on the power company-> the voltage available to everyone’s house will go down. And when everyone goes to work and turns everything off the voltage will go back up again.. same thing happens in the evening, if anyone is interested enough, you can hook up a volt meter to a plug in your house, and watch the voltage change, early evening the voltage will be 120 dead on probably but as everyone gets home from work the voltage will probably go down a bit maybe 5 to 10 volts.. This is where a line conditioner comes into play, what a line conditioner will do is it will maintain the 120 volts, even though the incoming voltage may be going down.. Now with your amps and electronic devices if you maintain a constant voltage, they will operate the “exact” same and should provide a better sound.. this is only true with analog devices though. Digital devices are MUCH less sensitive to voltage changes.. so the only part of your home theater that could “truly” benefit from a line conditioner is the amp that you have… be it a stand alone amp, or an integrated amp in your receiver.. Sense the amps are analog and work on varying the voltage, that the amp will put out, there for varying the amount of current that your speakers see and the volume/control of the individual speaker, a very constant input voltage is the best way to get exactly what you want as an output.. Kind of like crap in = crap out..


The problem with the line conditioner that you have restricting your amp, are you sure that the line conditioner can handle the current that your amp is out putting. Does it have the same amp rating; I would imagine that it does not. For a line conditioner to work effectively it should be rated at equal to or greater than the device you are plugging into it.

A line conditioner does not maintain a constant voltage that would be a voltage stabilizer.