There is no doubt that power conditioning has become an automatic upgrade for all serious music and home theater fans. Why? Simply put, the power from your local utility is unstable. It’s also noisy and distorted. Anyone with an expensive high end system knows that performance is compromised and components are at risk of being damaged from exposure to the voltage surges, distortions and the familiar “dimming light bulb” or “sag". These problems cause 90% of the component failure we see today.  

There is also no doubt that the Power Conditioning category is full of hype. The best way to protect yourself from wasting your money is to be informed.  PurePower products are based on science and sound electrical engineering principles, not voodoo. To make things easy, here are the top 5 things you should know about AC conditioning before you decide what to buy.

1.   What's the difference between a power conditioner and a power strip?
Typically, not much. Most power conditioners are merely power strips on steroids. The first power conditioners were power strips with surge protection and a noise filter. Every variation on that theme is still a power strip at heart and only capable of a moderate degree of protection, some noise reduction, but no isolation from the power utility.  There is no reason to spend more than $99 on one of these, although some brands are offered at over $3,000. Generally, they do nothing to regulate the voltage or correct the sine wave. The bigger they are, the more power they consume, drawing power away from your system. A few expensive models add stepped voltage regulation and one even has sine wave correction as well. These are nice features to put on a power conditioner but still don’t offer true isolation from the local utility. Our biggest complaint about the expensive conditioners is that many of them crush the dynamics of your audio system to such an extent, they ruin the listening experience.

2.  What are the most common AC problems?
There are 10 things that can go wrong with your inbound AC power from the local power company that will affect your system. We call them the ten Power Gremlins.
1.       Blackouts: A total loss of utility power
2.       Frequency variation: A change in frequency stability
3.       Transients: Instantaneous high voltage increase in the range of nanoseconds
4.       Harmonics: Distortion of the normal waveform, generally transmitted by non-linear loads
5.       Over Voltage:Increased line voltage for extended periods of a few minutes to a few days
6.       Brownouts: Reduced line voltage for extended periods of a few minutes to a few days
7.       Sags: Short term low voltage
8.       Electro Magnetic Interference: (EMI) High Frequency waveform - often referred to as noise
9.       Radio Frequency Interference: RFI) Also a High Frequency waveform - often referred to as noise
10.   Surges: Short term high voltage

Battery Power: The Benchmark 

Audiophiles worldwide know that battery power is the purest, cleanest, power source for their systems. It is the benchmark by which all power conditioners should be judged. Running a modern day AV system strictly on battery power is impractical because it would cost a fortune recharging and replenishing worn out batteries.  

The PurePower 1050 however, delivers AC power that is identical to that provided by a fully isolated battery supply, and what's more, it gives you a simple way to prove it. To compare the quality of its power regenerated from the utility AC to the "benchmark" power generated from its on-board battery system,  simply pull the plug from the wall during operation. We encourage all PurePower customers to do this test themselves when they first set it up. There is no perceptible difference between the undeniably pure power from the isolated battery supply and the power regenerated from the utility power in the wall outlet - no matter how poor the incoming utility power.  Listening to PurePower is the closest thing to listening to pure battery power full time. It's that good.

3.  Do typical power conditioners protect my system  from all 10 Power Gremlins?
No. Some provide protection from 2 or 3 or even 5  of these threats but no power conditioning product except PurePower solves all of them at the same time in one box. See our Power Gremlin  chart to compare the protection capabilities of typical power conditioner technologies.

4.   What is AC Regeneration?
This is the term used to describe the process of converting the inbound AC from the utility company into DC, then back to AC again as a perfect, noise-free, stable voltage sine wave. PurePower’s proprietary design delivers newly generated AC to your system, at the point of use and always keeps it totally isolated from the utility supply.

5.  Who makes the world’s best AC Regenerator?  PurePower. We make the only authentic AC Regenerator on the market today because it’s the only product to offer total isolation from the local utility. This means it delivers a perfect 120v output, (or 230v in export markets) regardless of what’s going on at the local utility, regardless of the load. No other product on the market can make that statement. No other product can deliver as much current, measured in RMS watts, as PurePower can because nothing else is as efficient.  In fact, PurePower can outperform the wall outlet in watts delivered to power hungry amps by 10%, driving your amplifier to new heights of dynamic range with the latest HD audio content.  
 

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Copyright 2003 - 2008  PurePower Partners LLC.