My house is the last on the power line and subject to voltage swings of up to 10V. I have been looking at voltage regulators for about 8 months now.

Most I cannot afford and some I don't think will do the job. Well finally I settled on a APC H15 and found one cheap on the bay. I hooked it up and sat down and was stunned. I'm not a big believer in tweaks, cords and such. As I feel the engineers of yore couldn't have all been so ignorant as not to have tried most of the stuff out there today in one form or another.

I wont go into the audiobabble BS but I will say the difference in sound was marked. More detail, larger soundstage and a thing or two I cannot describe. I thought I was suffering from heat exhaustion so I hooked the Monster 3500 back up things went back to where they were. I even hooked things up to just the wall outlets to make sure the 3500 wasn't curbing the sound. It wasn't.

So now I am a believer in good clean power. Who knows, maybe next week I'll get some M'Pingo wood stand offs for my speaker zipcord. Or even really go all out and make the magic phonecall to MD.

I was scrounging through some "stuff" in my warehouse and stumbled across a Triplite LC1200 line conditioner. I have yet to try it and am afraid my marginal hearing may not detect a difference, but it is going in the house to become a part of my system some day. I'm sure it can't hurt.....

Amps produce the most power when the line voltage is spec, i.e. 120v. At my house, the lights dim when my neighbor's A/C kicks in so I have my doubts about my line voltage. A line condition is on my list.

Imho is the most effective upgrade in a hi-fi chain.
...and imo you should try to make ( if it's possible, of course) an independent circuit from the main board to your "hi-fi socket plugs".
I'm true believer of a good power line, same polarity between all the gear and of course an independent ground wire aswell. I'm a true believer that every little thing counts on audio.

Everybody talks about sources being the most important component in an audio chain. Of course, it is important, but what is the use if you have a "bad/noisy ac current"?! The source (and the common factor) in every hi-fi chain is electric current.

I bought a belkin on ebay for 35.00. It works as a surge protector also. I know it works I've had to reset it a few times after a lightening storm. Best money I've spent to protect and to keep the volts right.
Larry

The reason I bought the APC was for the voltage regulation feature. The power conditioning is a bonus for what I was after. The Monster 3500 I had hooked up before is a power conditioner and without voltage regulation it's a waste of time in my case. YMMV.

One of my next upgrades is a long this line and should be considered. I am running a dedicated circuit for my system, I have everything I just need to get to it, I am using 10/2 with ground on a 20 amp breaker and 20 amp outlet. This should help with voltage drop, as well as eliminate any other line noise from other electronics on the same circuit, I have the 3500 Monster (yeah I know) but with the dedicated circuit and heavier guage wire I should eleiminate most of the issues with voltage drop. It is just one of the problems we face with our search for MORE POWER! If you can't provide current how can you expect your amplifier to provide you with good deep bass and strong impact, this all requires power, that is required quickly on demand.

Jim