Audioquest Niagara 1200 Review (Power Conditioner/Surge Protector)

[Tarq]

I think most people don’t realize on top of this, that this is useless junk, what most people may actually be hearing is the coloration.

I am certain this may create fairly negative opinions, that a “power” supply can’t color sound. Some may agree.

Just hear me out.

But the piece of advice I got, from a person who only deals with high end audio, and I mean systems[plural] that cost 400,000. That person is Jay from Jays audio lab, just to get to the point the guy doesn’t care what it costs he’s well off. That he does not like power conditioners and that plugging straight into the wall is your best choice hands down. Obviously he has owned 5 figure power conditioners and is always having this experience. Further making it useless and unnecessary.

Just something to really think about, and honestly something I don’t doubt. From my personal experience I got a crap power conditioner, not for my stereo listening or sound quality but strictly for automatic voltage regulation[AVR]. Never even knew that I had sags down to a 100 volts sometimes, but I purchased this prior to my audio video receiver even being hooked up and it only cost me $200.

It definitely makes my music brighter and more sibilant but has never been a factor since I don’t use it as a dedicated stereo listening. It’s definitely doing something to the sound and this what makes people go bonkers and say they hear a difference

Edit, also referring back to Amir’s post/video of providing audio equipment the dirtiest possible signal and it having absolutely no effect on a well engineered component designed unit further smashes AQ’s bs into the ground

Looks like you need more than power filtering if the voltage in your house goes below 112-114.

 

[Tarq]

"At furman, I was the only one in engineering team who thought wire made a difference. At Audioquest everyone does!"

Good grief!

Good grief...

 

[MacCali]

Looks like you need more than power filtering if the voltage in your house goes below 112-114.

Yea that’s about the only thing that may be of concern, I picked that up from audioholics. I will say though, the point or product which seems to require a healthy and stable voltage is usually AVRs or multi channel amps.

Clearly they suck a lot of watts and honestly don’t want to think about the relation to voltage. But even those considered, for the most part if you ever use any power amps with a VU meter you can see that typically even at “decent” loud the amp barely pumps out more than 8 watts consistently and higher jumps are instantaneous.

Which is why probably slew rate and current are factors to consider internally. I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but those are probably a few of them and probably go hand in hand.

Not an audio engineer or expert by any means, just a few observations I’ve made

On the topic of cables, equally with power conditioning, simply put what about the normal wiring inside the unit? Let’s just forget about that?

If you’re really about cables make a difference and you’re only buying products that the average Joe can afford you would think those cables would clearly need to be replaced as well and that’s far easier said than done. To get the palpable difference

*Applying to inter and power cables

 

[giobrend]

Edit:. Translated from Italian by moderator.
Please post in English going forward.
Welcome!


Excuse the intrusion and my english. I bought a Niagara 1200 in exchange for 2 old unused speakers (I never would have done it otherwise). My system has improved especially in the tighter bass and overall clarity. I guarantee you I have no interest, psychic or otherwise. All I care about is hearing better

 

[AudiOhm]

Translation @giobrend "Excuse the intrusion and my English. I bought a Niagara 1200 in exchange for 2 old unused speakers (I never would have done it otherwise). My system has improved especially in the tighter bass and overall clarity. I guarantee you I have no interest, psychic or otherwise. All I care about is hearing better"

Ohms

 

[MacCali]

Edit:. Translated from Italian by moderator.
Please post in English going forward.
Welcome!


Excuse the intrusion and my english. I bought a Niagara 1200 in exchange for 2 old unused speakers (I never would have done it otherwise). My system has improved especially in the tighter bass and overall clarity. I guarantee you I have no interest, psychic or otherwise. All I care about is hearing better

We appreciate your input and opinion.

The only thing we use here is evidence. So unless you can pass a test where this power conditioner is used and not used, identifying which is being used numerous times we find your understanding to be invalid. This test would be done without your knowledge of what you are hearing, or what we refer to as a blind test.

If you view my previous comments, there is a video posted on youtube by Amir. This video shows a power conditioner which can provide clean and extremely dirty power to audio equipment. The unit was provided the most dirty power from this machine and the measurements did not change. If it cleans it up it should be visible in the test. Just to be clear no wall outlet can be as bad as that machine, from what I understood.

 

[DavidM1]

It’s great that you name reviewers and reprint their appraisals. Always useful to see who said what.

Edited: I just noticed the video featured Garth Powell, AudioQuest’s Senior Director of Engineering. I expect he will be itching to respond.

 

[amirm]

y system has improved especially in the tighter bass and overall clarity. I guarantee you I have no interest, psychic or otherwise. All I care about is hearing better

And I will guarantee you that if I sell you an empty box, you will "hear" the same thing. Your description perfectly matches someone who listens more intently for a change and that is what they hear, especially "clarity." This is the reason that everything no matter how improbable, is described to improve the sound the way you describe it! It is you that is changing the same way every time. Your equipment sound has not changed.

 

[MacCali]

Maybe another addition to this subject @giobrend is that we see with most of these power conditioning units that only measured benefit is actually occurring outside of the audible spectrum.

We have no definitive answer to how our mind fully perceives this noise above what we as humans can hear.

With this in mind you must consider what your equipment can produce. Speakers and amplifiers clearly have a range of sound they output. Sometimes being outside of our range of hearing 20hz-100khz. However in this instance if your amp or speakers do not produce any sound outside of that spectrum that filtering which is technically useless in any regard can never be beneficial since it is not being output.

Since most gear is limited to 20hz to 20khz

But truth be told we enjoy music very much the same when played 20hz to 20khz or 20hz to 100khz. Considering that if we played just 20khz to 100khz we would hear nothing meaningful this provides another perspective.

 

[fireboy1968]

Since the Niagra 1200 uses inductors, it looks like Inductor based powerline conditioners have come a long way. They used to choke of power to your amplifier and make your whole system sound worse. But please look up inductor flyback. This product has MOV to protect your components from your surge protector. And every time you have a power outage or unplug it from the wall, a power surge is going into those MOV. I am pretty sure that inductor-based powerline conditioners have damaged more audio equipment than what comes out of the wall.

 

[yodog]

I wonder if the Niagara 3000/5000/7000 would test the same?

 

[JetJuice]

I am truly on the fence about this topic. I of course want to get the best sound possible out of my system. We can all (probably) agree that there is a difference in what we hear between listening to a $50 receiver from (insert era here) and a $1000+ receiver from (insert era here). The electronicals and design used DO matter in what we hear and at some point we may even be able to quantify or attach a certain type of electronical to a certain type of sound. Like the topic of the warmth of tubes or harshness of digital music. The problem is saying that (I am not an electrical wizard...) "this graph on this chart here at this mhz" will absolutely make your music sound like a tin can... or like a bass trap or whatever. There are so many variables... it is like saying that the manufacture of oil paint with a viscosity of XX and oil from Indonesia vs. Russia will make a painting by Picasso look worse (or better). It is all our perception of the final product that decides.
SO, what on a graph or chart will tell anyone that something will sound good or bad? I read a lot in this post and see a lot of smoking gun type of rhetoratic, "evidence" that something is snake oil. What evidence? It is all opinion... all of it. Good or bad, sounds good, sounds bad... all opinion. If someone hooks up a DAC or AMP or whatever and decides it sounds good then it sounds good. Is a tube of $1000 oil paint going to make a better painting? Picasso used mostly house paint...

 

[Speedskater]

While there is a good chance that a $1000 receiver will sound different than a $50 receive. There is little chance that a $1000 cable will sound different than a $50 cable. "power conditioner" odds are little better than cable odds.

 

[tmtomh]

I am truly on the fence about this topic. I of course want to get the best sound possible out of my system. We can all (probably) agree that there is a difference in what we hear between listening to a $50 receiver from (insert era here) and a $1000+ receiver from (insert era here). The electronicals and design used DO matter in what we hear and at some point we may even be able to quantify or attach a certain type of electronical to a certain type of sound. Like the topic of the warmth of tubes or harshness of digital music. The problem is saying that (I am not an electrical wizard...) "this graph on this chart here at this mhz" will absolutely make your music sound like a tin can... or like a bass trap or whatever. There are so many variables... it is like saying that the manufacture of oil paint with a viscosity of XX and oil from Indonesia vs. Russia will make a painting by Picasso look worse (or better). It is all our perception of the final product that decides.
SO, what on a graph or chart will tell anyone that something will sound good or bad? I read a lot in this post and see a lot of smoking gun type of rhetoratic, "evidence" that something is snake oil. What evidence? It is all opinion... all of it. Good or bad, sounds good, sounds bad... all opinion. If someone hooks up a DAC or AMP or whatever and decides it sounds good then it sounds good. Is a tube of $1000 oil paint going to make a better painting? Picasso used mostly house paint...

$50 vs $1000 receiver: I'd suggest that the audio performance is the metric we're looking for, not the price. The $50 receiver will almost always perform worse, true - but that's because the price point severely constrains the designer's/company's ability to engineer the receiver for maximum fidelity. And as @Speedskater notes above, even this indirect impact of price becomes irrelevant when we're talking about components that cost very little to produce, like cables. Heck, there are even $50 DACs - or at least $100-$150 DACs - that folks would be unable to differentiate from a $1000 DAC in a blind, level-matched listening comparison.

The electronics and design do indeed matter as you say. The question is, what exactly matters, and how much does it matter? If a company says their amplifier sounds better because it uses silk capacitors or a special op-amp, or discrete wiring instead of an op-amp, that doesn't mean their claim is automatically true. We can easily figure out if it's true, though, by taking measurements, which is what @amirm and others on this site routinely do. So it's not like there's some huge mystery and we don't know.

As for correlating a certain type of electronics to a certain type of sound, yes, absolutely - we already can do that. But what you're talking about is trying to correlate certain electrical or electronic differences to audio differences that people say they hear, but which have not been subjected to rigorous blind testing. In other words, before you can start to try to figure out why two amps sound different, you first have to establish that they do in fact sound different. This is a crucial step that most audiophiles skip.

The "problem," as you identify it, is not "this graph on this chart here at this mhz will absolutely make your music sound like a tin can." The reason that's not a problem is because no one ever claims that. To the contrary, it's folks who don't believe in measurements who make such claims: "these cable lifters produced immediate improvement in soundstage imaging"; "this power conditioner is the most important upgrade you'll ever make, massively improving detail retrieval"; and so on.

There are indeed many variables, as you say. But your comment here engages in a very common line of argument: you are sort of waving your hands and saying "there's so much we don't know," when in fact there's quite a lot that we do know, and to frame the issue the way you are framing it, one has to ignore a lot of what we already know.

As for Picasso, the analogy there is to the recording and production of music for artistic effect, not to the reproduction of music. Different paint might make a painting look different. Whether it makes it look better or worse is up to Picasso and to whomever else looks at the painting. That's subjective because it's about art and expression. It's not about the fidelity of reproduction.

As for what on a chart can tell us that something will sound good or bad? Well, that depends in part on what you think good or bad sound is. But there are plenty of measurements that can tell us if a piece of gear is likely to reproduce recorded music well - that is, with maximum fidelity - or poorly - that is, with audible divergences from maximum fidelity. So for example poor channel separation or high noise or intermodulation distortion - or very low amplification power resulting in clipping at moderate listening volume - are all measurements that can be put on a chart, and that can tell us that we are likely to hear "bad" or compromised sound out of a piece of gear in at least some circumstances.

Finally, if someone hooks up a DAC or amp and decides it sounds good, it does indeed sound good - but there are two crucial caveats there:

1. It might not sound good to someone else. That's fine of course, but a major point of measurements is that, unlike subjective listening impressions, they allow us to communicate effectively about the audio performance of gear. If it's all subjective and you rely only on others' subjective opinions, then you're just shooting in the dark when you rely on their recommendations about what to buy.

2. The DAC or amp might sound good to you when you hear it that time. But with purely subjective listening impressions, you have no assurance that it will sound just as good that night, or the next day, or three months from now. Human hearing is notoriously variable. Our hearing is more sensitive at night; our hearing is heavily impacted by our mood, what we're looking at, what sounds we've been subjected to or what environment we've just been in before we start listening; and so on. Of course our own subjective enjoyment is the end goal - but relying solely on our subjective listening impressions to ensure that we get maximal audio enjoyment over the long term is a weak strategy. Hence the value of measurements.

 

[teched58]

I am truly on the fence about this topic. I of course want to get the best sound possible out of my system. We can all (probably) agree that there is a difference in what we hear between listening to a $50 receiver from (insert era here) and a $1000+ receiver from (insert era here). The electronicals and design used DO matter in what we hear and at some point we may even be able to quantify or attach a certain type of electronical to a certain type of sound. Like the topic of the warmth of tubes or harshness of digital music. The problem is saying that (I am not an electrical wizard...) "this graph on this chart here at this mhz" will absolutely make your music sound like a tin can... or like a bass trap or whatever. There are so many variables... it is like saying that the manufacture of oil paint with a viscosity of XX and oil from Indonesia vs. Russia will make a painting by Picasso look worse (or better). It is all our perception of the final product that decides.
SO, what on a graph or chart will tell anyone that something will sound good or bad? I read a lot in this post and see a lot of smoking gun type of rhetoratic, "evidence" that something is snake oil. What evidence? It is all opinion... all of it. Good or bad, sounds good, sounds bad... all opinion. If someone hooks up a DAC or AMP or whatever and decides it sounds good then it sounds good. Is a tube of $1000 oil paint going to make a better painting? Picasso used mostly house paint...

We were told recently that it's important to be nice to new forum members, no matter how ̶#̶@̶%̶%̶!̶!̶!̶!̶*̶*̶&̶^̶ wonderful their posts are.

So thank you very much for educating me. You have convinced me that there is much I don't know. So you've expanded my horizons. Also, I will be running for President.

 

[amirm]

SO, what on a graph or chart will tell anyone that something will sound good or bad?

We don't get to that question because the device doesn't make any improvements the output of the audio gear. So there is no good or bad here. Just money thrown at a problem that doesn't exist. The measurements show that:

Here I am showing you that the AC power is essentially as "dirty" after it came out of this box as what went in. So even "what is written on the can" doesn't do anything useful because it doesn't filter down to low enough frequency. Your audio electronics on the other hand filter down to DC because that is what they operate on, DC, not AC. I showed this with the topping amp.

Bottom line, this is like asking if I wear a red shirt, will the system sound better compared to a blue one. Answer is that both sound the same.

If you rather watch something on this topic, I have done a few videos. Here is one for starters:

 

[JetJuice]

First of all.... I love that we have had some good candid well thought out banter. (I keep an eye on the Audiogon Forum and I hate all of the posturing there, it reads like a soap opera). I am a few glasses of wine in the night so I will soak all of this in and respond tomorrow. Thank you for the feedback.

 

[MacCali]

I am truly on the fence about this topic. I of course want to get the best sound possible out of my system. We can all (probably) agree that there is a difference in what we hear between listening to a $50 receiver from (insert era here) and a $1000+ receiver from (insert era here). The electronicals and design used DO matter in what we hear and at some point we may even be able to quantify or attach a certain type of electronical to a certain type of sound. Like the topic of the warmth of tubes or harshness of digital music. The problem is saying that (I am not an electrical wizard...) "this graph on this chart here at this mhz" will absolutely make your music sound like a tin can... or like a bass trap or whatever. There are so many variables... it is like saying that the manufacture of oil paint with a viscosity of XX and oil from Indonesia vs. Russia will make a painting by Picasso look worse (or better). It is all our perception of the final product that decides.
SO, what on a graph or chart will tell anyone that something will sound good or bad? I read a lot in this post and see a lot of smoking gun type of rhetoratic, "evidence" that something is snake oil. What evidence? It is all opinion... all of it. Good or bad, sounds good, sounds bad... all opinion. If someone hooks up a DAC or AMP or whatever and decides it sounds good then it sounds good. Is a tube of $1000 oil paint going to make a better painting? Picasso used mostly house paint...

I think when a company makes certain claims they should be tested for authenticity.

We see that recently with the GR research power cable we had this finding. The guy says if you can’t hear the difference your system isn’t the best. So if that’s the case make sure to put that as a note rather than sell a couple 100 and have Amir do the work for the manufacturer.

The second part is you can’t say definitively if something is better or not without either doing a double blind test or measuring it. Here we clearly don’t have a double blind test, but no one is stopping anyone from doing it on there own.

Record it, post it, and go from there.

Andrew Robinson had a great discussion of this topic, even though many people would not give that dude any reputable feedback since he is purely subjective and we are not.

During a visit to the harman labs or whatever they are called, where Floyd Toole does his research they ran this test and even the guy who designed and tuned a speaker could not identify his own product.

There’s much more to it psychologically.

Amir is not here to tell you don’t buy this or buy that. If you’re rich beyond belief buy whatever you want this forum isn’t for that. This forum is to help people who are not rich, so they don’t spend money on fairy dust when it can be invested else where.

Not sure what’s not to like about this fact

 

[MacCali]

We were told recently that it's important to be nice to new forum members, no matter how ̶#̶@̶%̶%̶!̶!̶!̶!̶*̶*̶&̶^̶ wonderful their posts are.

So thank you very much for educating me. You have convinced me that there is much I don't know. So you've expanded my horizons. Also, I will be running for President.

Should be kind to everyone in any circumstance. People are entitled to their opinion even if they want to troll or not. We all were in those shoes too before we jumped over that hurdle.

 

[teched58]

Should be kind to everyone in any circumstance. People are entitled to their opinion even if they want to troll or not. We all were in those shoes too before we jumped over that hurdle.

I get what you're saying and appreciate the call for civility, which as you note is how one should conduct oneself in all areas of life.

However, we were definitely not all in those shoes, not those of us who went to engineering school and worked at tech companies.

One should respect people; one needn't respect all of their opinions and/or statements.