First let me say, I have a power plant P12 and I am a believer. I’ve drank the Koolaid. I believe they make a huge difference and are worth the price of admission, at least to a point.
I am old school. Long before there was BlueTooth I hard wired my house so I could have music in the kitchen/dinning room, my screened in side porch facing West where I’ve listened to music and watched many a sun go down, and even the back patio where I’ve listened to music while tending the grill.
My system is a bit of a hybrid. I can fire up everything in the main listening room which is powered by my P-12. All the auxiliary components have always been plugged into an Adcom ACE-515. The balanced inputs on my Levinson pre amp go to my main system and the RCAs go to an Adcom 545. I don’t feel like constantly running the stairs so I have an inexpensive carousel I use for a transport and I use my Levinson 390S for the D to A. For casual listening, it’s wonderful! Certainly sounds better than my first system years ago.
Now I’m out of outlets on my P-12 and the ACE-515 only has 3 grounded outlets. Like I said, power plants are worth it, to a point. I needed something with more additional grounded outlets than the ACE-515 offered and plugging $700 worth of components into a $5000 power filter seems silly. Remember, none of the auxiliary system is in what you’d remotely call a controlled listening room.
So, to my point, I bought a Monster HTS-3600 power filter on Audiogon. I’ve replaced my Adcom ACE-515 with it. It has a voltage monitor on the face of it. I am astounded at how much the voltage varies during the day. Every time I walk down there I see the voltage hopping up and down. I do occasionally glance at the meter on my P-12. It’s set for %improvement and it occasionally moves but nowhere near as much as the voltage fluctuates on the Monster power filter. If you ever needed a cheap way to show someone how inconsistent the power coming into your house is, this is it.
I’ve long gotten past feeling like I need to justify what I spend on my system. If I hear a difference I feel is worth the money, I spend it and I’m happy with that. Some people, however, feel they must press you into a corner to justify what they see as audiophile madness. I paid $125 for the Monster power filter and gained a lot of grounded outlets for auxiliary equipment. I also picked up a cheap way to point and say, “see, see how that moves around?” And it’s a light show that gets through to people like that. Years ago I had someone say to me, “you know, your stereo sounds really good but it’s just a bunch of ugly black boxes with a single red light on each.” They’ll never get it and that’s OK but maybe, just maybe, the light show will throw them off long enough to think that you might not be so crazy after all.
I didn’t see an editorial topic or I’d have place this there.