AudioQuest PowerQuest 3 Power Conditioner & Surge Protector Review

[welsh]

I meant for the believers. If they can't hear anything in the (near) null, how can they then claim that there is a difference that doesn't show in measurements but is nevertheless audible?

I’m a believer… not a trace of doubt in my mind! But, on the other hand: Desperation haunted all my dreams…

 

[Martini]

WHAT!!! They don't even uses their own "superior" wire in the construction of that thing, and this after touting dramatic sound improvements can be found by using their super-duper power cords. I'm shocked!!

The paired MOVs don't appear blown.

 

[welsh]

Michael Fremer seems to think that everything sounds better on vinyl even if it was made from a digital master.

Even Edison‘s original wax cylinder avoids the problems of a concentric record with less and less fidelity as you approach the dead wax.

 

[welsh]

I for one hope that Michael Fremer feels so slighted by what he sees on ASR that he quits reviewing, as Michael Lavorgna appeared to do after the Totaldac tests.

From his position as a self-appointed authority in the audio hobby, Fremer makes audio enthusiasts appear to be a bunch of loons (and yes, some of them are).

I saw him, along with his fellow luminaries Peter Breuninger and Alan Taffel, at the one big audio show I've attended. Fremer was running around with a GoPro on his head, Breuninger was kissing every manufacturer's ass, and Alan Taffel interrupted a sublime Mozart recording in the Sony ES room to ask that the latest Lady Gaga album be played instead.

I will never attend another audio show.

Both Fremer and Lavorgna specialised in ‘classy‘ insults when provoked. I seem to remember a foul-mouthed Lavorgna comment about somebody’s mother.

 

[Dialectic]

Both Fremer and Lavorgna specialised in ‘classy‘ insults when provoked. I seem to remember a foul-mouthed Lavorgna comment about somebody’s mother.

Yes, from my perspective, that whole set seems to be fading into oblivion. It is no great loss to the audio sciences.

 

[Chrispy]

Yes, from my perspective, that whole set seems to be fading into oblivion. It is no great loss to the audio sciences.

Unfortunately their ilk has propelled the likes of Bill Low into sustainability.....

 

[Dialectic]

Unfortunately their ilk has propelled the likes of Bill Low into sustainability.....

At least Monster Cable went out of business.

 

[Chrispy]

At least Monster Cable went out of business.

Did it or just the cable part and they're doing something else now with the money? I have some friends who are cousins of Noel Lee....

 

[snabbeltax]

I bought this hideous monster to protect and to serve....not to make my sound cristal clear.
It protects and it makes no noise. That's a good thing init? Enough with the ranting already.

 

[Dialectic]

I bought this hideous monster to protect and to serve....not to make my sound cristal clear.
It protects and it makes no noise. That's a good thing init? Enough with the ranting already.

Yes, it's good that an MOV surge protector makes no noise, especially when it costs $300.

 

[Chrispy]

I bought this hideous monster to protect and to serve....not to make my sound cristal clear.
It protects and it makes no noise. That's a good thing init? Enough with the ranting already.

Just that it really does pretty much nothing in the first place doesn't bother you?

 

[Jayce996]

Hi there,
I'm leaving in France and owing a BELKIN PF50, we will soon move to USA and i wanted to know if i would still be able to use it while the voltage & frequency will change from 240V to 110V.
This way i would still have my compatible gears (110-240V 50-60Hz) plugged to it with the existing power cables and protected.

 

[DonH56]

Hi there,
I'm leaving in France and owing a BELKIN PF50, we will soon move to USA and i wanted to know if i would still be able to use it while the voltage & frequency will change from 240V to 110V.
This way i would still have my compatible gears (110-240V 50-60Hz) plugged to it with the existing power cables and protected.

I see nothing in the manual showing it can handle 120 V input, just 240 V. I would contact Belkin support.

 

[fpitas]

I'm not defending AQ, but there is validity in filtering high frequencies outside the audible range as they could have negative effects in the form of EMC/EMI. This could affect the TV more than an audio system, but an audio system with very wide bandwidth could waste its efforts amplifying inaudible stuff like from Class D amplifiers or switching power supplies or even nearby cell phones. I'm not sure how any recommendation should be given, Amir, for its primary function of surge protection, unless that is tested. You can't assume anything these days

Any filtering is good, and more won't hurt, but most competent power supplies can deal with the higher frequency stuff.

 

[GXAlan]

I was the one who sent this in. I will say that I have had surges the likes of which triggered the “overvoltage” light on my Furman power conditioner and this unit.

The surge was enough to affect a GFCI outlet and an APC budget MOV surge protector.

So at least from the standpoint of series mode “non sacrificial” surge protection, this unit did its job.

 

[ReevaluateAdNauseam]

Correct. Audioquest's Garth Powell was the guy at Furman behind their SMP "Series Multi-Stage Protection" surge protection. They were sued and prevented from calling it "Series Mode" protection.

He brought it over to Audioquest. In reality, it's 2 small MOVs shunting to neutral before the surge gets to a small inductor. The over-voltage relay only protects 1 of the 2 MOVs, and the first MOV also lacks a thermal fuse, so you'll never know whether or not it's still functional. Once the 2 small MOVs inevitably take enough hits, the until has to be replaced. How on earth they call it non-sacrificial surge protection is beyond me.

All in all, it's a jack of all trades master of none surge protection. The over-voltage relay is it's best feature by far. It has barely any series mode protection, and only a couple MOVs. You're better off getting a proper MOV-based surge protector with lots more of them and proper thermal fuses. Same goes for series mode protection, you need a much larger air core inductor that won't get saturated as quickly.

View attachment 72574


SurgeX (This model also features inrush current elimination)
View attachment 72575

Very much appreciated! Great info.

 

[Pecrobet]

There is a lot of power line hysteria out there however. Some kooks at the local audio club went so far as to rewire their house so the audio gear could have a private special quiet run to the breaker panel! I think Doug Self said if a piece of audio gear can't tolerate noise and distortion on the power line it's not properly designed; just don't buy it.

I have read of individuals building add-on room with sound proofing materials on cement floor, separate power line to room, breaker panel box and more outlandish things for audio sound room.

At some point, you need to ask yourself what are you trying to accomplish and at what cost? Are you interested in music anymore or equipment?

Just my thoughts on subject.

 

[Lowfreakwency]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the AudioQuest PowerQuest 3 Power Conditioner, Non-Sacrificial Surge Protector and Power Strip. It was purchased new and kindly drop shipped to me by a member. It costs US $300 from Amazon including Prime shipping.

OK, power strips don't have to be pretty but this is one big, ugly, heavy, plasticy power strip:

View attachment 72325

Granted, there is some goodness in having widely spaced receptacles that are duplicated on the front as on the face. And heavy weight helps keep it in place.

I like the non-destructive surge protection as typical surge device degrades with use and eventually can die in catastrophic manner (think smoke). There is an over voltage protection here as well (anything above 140 volts). I am not here to test these capabilities however. The focus is on the improvement in audio as claimed:

View attachment 72326

The outlets are specialized in that there is a pair for high-current devices, two for general audio, and a single one for 4K/8k video device. How you optimize a power strip for resolution of a display is beyond my pay scale.

Power Conditioner AC Measurements
I still can't find my darn differential probe so had to resort once again to using a step-down AC transformer (same one that came with the JDS Labs Atom DAC) to bring the voltage to something reasonable that doesn't destroy my audio analyzer. Here is the spectrum of AC where I plug in my analyzer and all the audio devices I test, as compared to the high-current outlet in PQ3:

View attachment 72328

The first spike is at 60 Hz and that is all we want. Alas, we also get a boatload of other harmonics and noise products continuing on to the end of the 90 kHz bandwidth of this test.

Alas, the PQ3 has no effect on any of this unwanted energy. All the noise is coming through at very high amplitudes to boot. We are talking forth harmonic that is just -32 dB lower than 60 Hz. Yet our electronic devices manage to produce distortions that are routinely -110 dB or better. How do they do that? They do their own filtering which is a heck of a lot easier and cheaper to do on a 5 volt DC signal than 120 volt AC.

OK, high current outlets typically don't have filtering in these devices so let's move to the middle outlets which are for audio devices and see what we get:

View attachment 72332

All the junk in audible band remains exactly the same. There is however filtering above 30 kHz. If you look at the fine print in the spec as I have shown on the graph (top right), company says the same thing. So our measurements are correct and prove that no audible frequency noise or distortion is removed by PQ3!

As to the 4K/8K video outlet, I find no difference between it and the outlet above:

View attachment 72335

Note that if your display did not filter out the junk above 60 Hz already, the image would be terrible. The fact that it is pristine, and blacks are black in an OLED display, it indicates that it is of no need of further filtering.

Power Conditioning Effect DAC Measurements
Ultimately we listen to the output of an audio product, not what goes into it as far as mains power. So let's use our most sensitive test that brings out all spurious noise and jitter to see how the output of the JDS Labs Atom DAC varies with and without PQ3:


View attachment 72337

There is no real difference no matter how much you squint. Spurious tones at 1 kHz and harmonics remain (like USB packet noise). Tiny spurious tones do too despite having levels at whopping -145 dB. This is past the best case -- never seen in real life -- performance of 24 bit audio (no room temperature DAC or electronics can get down to 24 bits).

We could test many more devices but the results will be the same. As I mentioned at the outset, this is the outlet I use to test all audio devices and the fact that we see spectacular performance proves that we don't need to prefilter the AC mains.

Conclusions
It is clear that the PowerQuest 3 does nothing for our audio performance. I am confident the same is true for your video device. So the claims there completely unjustified.

On surge protection though, there is some value add in what seems to be an absorbing type device (series?) and over voltage protection (although its response time may be too slow to do any good). For this reason, I did not give the PQ3 the worst score I could.

As an audio and video improving device, I cannot recommend the AudioQuest PowerQuest 3. Only buy it because you need some of the other things it does, or its form factor.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

It never ends. The pink panthers are now complaining that they are tired of posing "in the nude" and want me cloths them for pictures. I don't know where you get outfits for them but assuming I can find a source, I need the money. So please donate what you can using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

 

[Lowfreakwency]

Great review as always. Your thoroughness is impressive. I bought this unit completely expecting I'd see this analysis from you. Skepticism is important when stuff costs so much! I got it mostly because of the subliminal audio "quality," the high-outputs, and the form factor. It's for my brand new tiny 10x10 listening room (with a desk) and I don't have the space for a giant power unit. I wanted something measurably better than a dime store power strip.

 

[milosz]

Amir, you may not need the improvements a power conditioner can offer. In the pacific northwest where you live much of your electrical power comes from hydroelectric plants, which I've read is the best sounding power.....*

*Yes I once actually saw a ranked list of WHICH POWER SOUNDS BETTER with hydro being best, then gas-fired, then coal-fired, then solar, then wind and the worst was nuclear. Can you imagine that? People actually believe that kind of horse puckey.