Are these similar to the Brickwall boxes I've seen?

I've never been able to resist an extraordinary bottom end. 

Buzzing sounds like a ground issue to me.... maybe get a technician to check out your ground line. I know some houses still ground via water pipes....yuck.

For a really good, in-depth explanation of what power strips do and why you shouldn't overspend, check this from Brent Butterworth (one of my favorite no-bullshit audio guys):
http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-surge-protector/

I would strongly caution against taking this as gospel. "How important is noise filtering? Again, it depends. All power supplies, whether internal or external, have noise filtration built in—in most cases, enough to prevent any noise coming in on the AC line from interfering with the operation or performance of your electronics. Still, it’s possible that a badly designed power supply could throw enough noise back into your lines to cause problems."

The words "any" and "interfering" are pretty sweeping and really not accurate. Yes, if you have a fairly basic system, one of these power strips will be fine. If you're attempting to plug something like a BAlabo into the APC recommended in the article though and thinking you outsmarted everybody with a high-end PLC, you're shooting yourself in the foot. The APC will just strangle it to death.

Now granted, if you're buying a BAlabo you should worry much more about dedicated house wiring for the audio system rather than running your system on a regular circuit with a PLC. Most people in this hobby though will fall somewhere in the middle where a good PLC makes sense.

Yes, a component is not going to pass FCC cert if it's belting out enough RF or EMI to seriously affect other components. That does NOT however mean that any component  with a "competently designed" power supply is "immune" to say a switch-mode laptop power brick on the circuit. Yes it will still work fine. Will it sound as good? Probably not.

IME, none of my competently designed equipment has ever sounded as good at 2PM as at 2AM. A $30 power filter with a couple of caps and inductors and a few metal oxide varistors won't change that. Chances are it will actually make things worse by restricting dynamics. As noted in the article, the most these things can do is -20 to 30dB of noise reduction, and that's happening in the range above 100kHz, obviously nowhere near the audible band. I would also not describe a POS Monster that's the exact same type of filter with a 10X markup as a "high-end" product.

A truly high performance PLC needs preferably no MOV in the circuit, real caps instead of the $2 types, and a design capable of handling the absolutely immense power demands of high-end amplifiers. IME there are only a handful that qualify. Many of them despite prices that are well into the four figure range don't actually work, or are just extremely overpriced for what they are. The one that has impressed me most because it's in the ballpark with the Dmitri/Maxim and AR6-TS while costing 20% as much is the UberBUSS.

Quote from: Azteca X on August 19, 2014, 02:23:27 PM

For a really good, in-depth explanation of what power strips do and why you shouldn't overspend, check this from Brent Butterworth (one of my favorite no-bullshit audio guys):
http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-surge-protector/

I would strongly caution against taking this as gospel. "How important is noise filtering? Again, it depends. All power supplies, whether internal or external, have noise filtration built in—in most cases, enough to prevent any noise coming in on the AC line from interfering with the operation or performance of your electronics. Still, it’s possible that a badly designed power supply could throw enough noise back into your lines to cause problems."

The words "any" and "interfering" are pretty sweeping and really not accurate. Yes, if you have a fairly basic system, one of these power strips will be fine. If you're attempting to plug something like a BAlabo into the APC recommended in the article though and thinking you outsmarted everybody with a high-end PLC, you're shooting yourself in the foot. The APC will just strangle it to death.

Now granted, if you're buying a BAlabo you should worry much more about dedicated house wiring for the audio system rather than running your system on a regular circuit with a PLC. Most people in this hobby though will fall somewhere in the middle where a good PLC makes sense.

Yes, a component is not going to pass FCC cert if it's belting out enough RF or EMI to seriously affect other components. That does NOT however mean that any component  with a "competently designed" power supply is "immune" to say a switch-mode laptop power brick on the circuit. Yes it will still work fine. Will it sound as good? Probably not.

IME, none of my competently designed equipment has ever sounded as good at 2PM as at 2AM. A $30 power filter with a couple of caps and inductors and a few metal oxide varistors won't change that. Chances are it will actually make things worse by restricting dynamics. As noted in the article, the most these things can do is -20 to 30dB of noise reduction, and that's happening in the range above 100kHz, obviously nowhere near the audible band. I would also not describe a POS Monster that's the exact same type of filter with a 10X markup as a "high-end" product.

A truly high performance PLC needs preferably no MOV in the circuit, real caps instead of the $2 types, and a design capable of handling the absolutely immense power demands of high-end amplifiers. IME there are only a handful that qualify. Many of them despite prices that are well into the four figure range don't actually work, or are just extremely overpriced for what they are. The one that has impressed me most because it's in the ballpark with the Dmitri/Maxim and AR6-TS while costing 20% as much is the UberBUSS.

I'm not trying to say power doesn't matter or make a difference, simply that you need to shell out some serious cash and often increase complexity to be purchasing more than ridiculously marked-up products with new badging.  Dedicated lines are a good idea as well.
I'd love to have super clean power, or hell, balance d power from Equitech, but I'm not going to spend $1000 on a power related device when none of my components cost that much and I'm using solid state devices.  That's all.