Originally Posted by OBCT

RE: Power conditioners.

I've done a little bit of research into these in the past. Basically what I've found is that the good ones do work, but that their practicality for the "average joe" is usually almost nil. Also, remember that some power conditioners include voltage regulation and some do not. Voltage regulators are more expensive and are most commonly used in touchy industrial applications.

As sclitheroe touched on earlier in this thread, modern consumer/prosumer electronics are designed to be plugged directly into regular old outlets and work "properly". Even though it's true that the electrical current coming from your city's power grid is not "clean" and "consistent", the real world effects of this "problem" are usually negligible for the components we use.

For a power conditioner to be truly useful (beyond a good power bar//surge/spike suppressor//UPS), a few factors are generally required:

- highly sensitive electronics (with the potential of immediate catastrophic data loss or precision-biased input/output material - ie. a music recording studio, etc.)

- a significantly volatile or "dirty" source of electrical current. This can be from a known existing wire issue or similar, or may be implemented to avoid potential issues. Note that the volatility needed to fulfill the qualifier "significant" will vary - each application's threshold will differ.

The primary place I've heard power conditioners lauded (outside of industrial applications) is by professional musicians doing live gigs. Apparently the "quality" of power can get pretty bad on stage, with wires and mics sprawling every which way. Cleaning up the electrical interference caused by these factors with a power conditioner can apparently improve the clarity, directness and smoothness of, for instance, an electrical guitar's sound, considerably.

So, all that said... there is potential for improvement of electrical signal (objectively, via decreased interference) in most any application, but the real world improvement (subjective change observed) is almost certainly insignificant for any devices you and I own - they just aren't built sensitive enough for it to matter.


RE: UPS Surge Protectors.

Yup, those look like good options. APC is a brand I'd never hesitate to recommend.