Dave, yes, you are right about the 2am stuff. It has long been said that the power supply is cleaner in the night. But what difference would a power cord make to that. Power conditioning, maybe. Although previous comments about power supplies still apply. Remember, though, another big reason why your hifi is going to sound better at 2.00am: Lower ambient noise. Let's not overlook the simple answers. Stuff sounds better in a quieter room.
All that's left is deciding what 2m power cords to get. ship's recommendation on hospital power cords is at the top of my list, though I'm having trouble finding a good brand and website to go with.
People should not be too impressed with patents. Patents have become a joke. Draw a diagram of something with numbered arrows on it, you can patent it.
If there is a good device which protects against problems which are a severe risk to electronic components, without an audiophile label or price tag, then that is, I think, the thing to go for. There is nothing wrong with protecting kit, whether it is an amplifier or a washing machine, but if its own power supply does not sort out the every-day stuff coming down the line, then it probably wasn't a very good buy.Dave, yes, you are right about the 2am stuff. It has long been said that the power supply is cleaner in the night. But what difference would a power cord make to that. Power conditioning, maybe. Although previous comments about power supplies still apply. Remember, though, another big reason why your hifi is going to sound better at 2.00am: Lower ambient noise. Let's not overlook the simple answers. Stuff sounds better in a quieter room.
Component power supplies depend on the engineer, their budget constraints, and what their design priorities were. Brands like Pass, Levinson, and Boulder know their way around a power supply, and their amps will sound worse through the vast majority of line conditioners and power filters than going straight to the wall, but even they may get some benefit from an Audience or RSA. My own Simaudio W5.3 is not in the same class as these ultra elite level amps, but its power supply design is certainly no slouch. Nevertheless, running it through the Jaco makes it that little bit better.
That's not the whole story. If you listen to your system a lot, you may notice certain things, like there's an extra bit of goodness to the sound at around 2am when your neighbors are asleep and their lights and TVs and whatever else are all turned off. A good power conditioner can help to insulate your system from those power issues that are simply beyond your control, that may not cause obvious problems like transformer hum or buzzing from RFI, but just make your system sound not quite as good as it is capable of.
Running Springs makes excellent power distributors, and are one of the few that, as you say, you can plug the power amp into and not have it be current-limiting. The Jaco provides good value proposition as a power distributor.
If you can identify what exactly is making your system sound worse and why, then yeah, you might find that a power conditioner fixes the problem. But there has to be a distinct problem rather than a nebulous neurotic fear of not-good-enough, else you're really only doing it for peace of mind. Not that that's a bad thing mind you, but let's be honest about it and not cover it up with irrelevant technical extrapolations.
Yup. When I got it, it was the best performer I was able to find for right around $2K used. The Dmitri and Maxim cost more like $3500 on the used market and are a bit overkill for my setup. Audience's original AR6-T I thought was pretty comparable in performance to the Jaco, but cost more and had one less outlet, so I went with the Jaco. Audience has since revised their Teflon cap equipped models several times though, and the newest "SSD" variant is seriously good. Very expensive, but I'm not sure there's anything out there that's better.
