Well, I've always accepted that interconnects and speaker cable will have a big contribution to the overall sound quality of my system, but always been sceptical of the claims made for mains conditioners - it just didn't seem logical to me. Well, probably like many of you, I read this month's "The Big Question" and immediately started thinking that if 3 readers in blind testing noticed the biggest difference in cables was with a mains conditiner, then maybe I ought to put aside my preconceptions and give it a go. I still thought the Lindy one featured in the article was a bridge too far though, when Amazon where offering a very similar Tacima WHFSAV 5-star rated 6 way for £24.99 delivered (I'm not made of money!) and it duly turned up this morning.
I'd been A/B comparing an Afterlife album on CD vs. Spotify on a laptop I've just setup for computer based music to the hi-fi, so was quite settled into the album, and pleased (in a way) that the laptop with Audigy soundcard was still way way behind my Marantz SA7001 KI Signature CD player. Then I plugged the CD player and amp (13 year old Audiolab 8000S) into the Tacima mains conditioner. I certainly won't pretend that the difference was earth shattering, or like listening to a new system, but the most immediate difference is that at any given volume setting, the system is now louder (quite a lot louder) than it was before. Can't explain why that should be, as I am not technical - anyone out there that can, I would be pleased to know!
Have been listening to a few well-known albums, and I think there is also a definite increase in the brightness of the sound, though could always be the placebo effect of course... Perhaps too early to tell, but it certainly seems to have been "a good thing".
Anyway, has anyone else popped their conditioner cherry since the article and seen similar results, or indeed no results (or worse, a degradation)? I can't say I am "converted" but maybe just "conditioned" into being a bit more open minded, even after nearly 30 years of loving music and trying to reproduce it as best I can. Now, off to find a suitable brick to place on my amplifier, I seem to remember reading that as a great tweak about 25 years ago... you never know!
I'd been A/B comparing an Afterlife album on CD vs. Spotify on a laptop I've just setup for computer based music to the hi-fi, so was quite settled into the album, and pleased (in a way) that the laptop with Audigy soundcard was still way way behind my Marantz SA7001 KI Signature CD player. Then I plugged the CD player and amp (13 year old Audiolab 8000S) into the Tacima mains conditioner. I certainly won't pretend that the difference was earth shattering, or like listening to a new system, but the most immediate difference is that at any given volume setting, the system is now louder (quite a lot louder) than it was before. Can't explain why that should be, as I am not technical - anyone out there that can, I would be pleased to know!
Have been listening to a few well-known albums, and I think there is also a definite increase in the brightness of the sound, though could always be the placebo effect of course... Perhaps too early to tell, but it certainly seems to have been "a good thing".
Anyway, has anyone else popped their conditioner cherry since the article and seen similar results, or indeed no results (or worse, a degradation)? I can't say I am "converted" but maybe just "conditioned" into being a bit more open minded, even after nearly 30 years of loving music and trying to reproduce it as best I can. Now, off to find a suitable brick to place on my amplifier, I seem to remember reading that as a great tweak about 25 years ago... you never know!
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