@kemela

Isol-8 is a pioneer of high quality power conditioning components distributed in 32 countries. All Isol-8 products are designed and manufactured in the UK.

With a 20 year history of innovation, Isol-8 has a thorough understanding of how noise gets introduced into your HiFi system and then designs power conditioning units to effectviely get rid of this noise. From the start, founder Nic Poulson scrutinized where noise was being generated within an audio system and developed far more effective solutions than most power conditioners that are simply not built to solve.

Where does 'noise' come from?

Anything connected to mains wiring - such as dimmers and appliances - inside your home will be passed on to your components from the wall outlet. DC voltages, harmonic distortion, radio frequency interference introduced by other users on the power grid will also arrive at your wall socket. Noise generated by switch mode power supplies, diode rectifiers in linear power supplies, and circuits of the components themselves will create noise and this internal noise will vary according to temperature, load, and resonance interactions. It will be passed on from one component to another locally in your system stack and can only be partially addressed by the manufacturers of your HiFi components due to cost and internal space required.

Reducing noise

Standard duplex wall outlets do not have noise reducing features. The first step is better separated individual outlets - and you are likely going to need more than 2 outlets - with better internal wiring ideally with some measures to block noise from the ground plane coming back into your equipement that you won't get with cheap power strips. Simply improving power distribution is perfect for those concerned about 'conditioning'. A basic front end filter will help further but individual filters for each socket will be far better at reducing cross contamination from one component to another. Effective common and differential noise rediction that does not shunt noise back onto the gound plane casuing noise floor modulation is important and in many situations DC is superimposed unsetting the symmetry of power cycles in your components

All round approach

Quality power is about addressing all aspects potentially spoiling a supply, noise, DC, cross contamination, waveform distorion, and these are all far more relevant than exaggerated peak current ratings measured under zero ohm supply and load conditions that do not exist in the real world. Remember amplifiers are putting out a watt or two most of the time.

Understanding the job of the dedicated power conditioner

Many power conditioners use a front end filter followed by a chain of outlets connected to each other and simply ignore the issue of cross contanimation from one component to another. They ignore DC in the mains supply - a common occurence - and supposed fixes for common and differential noise often shunt the noise back onto the ground plane where it can still do harm to sound quality through . With Isol-8's no compromise approach, all of these issues are addressed so that real performance gains are heard and not just promised - right at the start of the Hi-Fi chain.