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AudioQuest PowerQuest 3 Power Conditioner & Surge Protector Review

Labjr

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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 what I can tell, Lavorgna still seems to be writing articles on his web site, even though he supposedly quit last year? I didn't know his Stereophile affiliated site was gone. Been about ten years since I last was on it. I don't expect Fremer to do the same. However, I can't imagine anyone getting into vinyl at this stage of the game. How can you push digitally mastered records to analog purists?
 

DonH56

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ipod_vinyl.png
 

tripitz

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I have to admit that I have a power conditioner in my system, but my observation has been that it has zero effect on sound. It does make a nice power distribution box. (Fortunately, I didn't pay retail.)

I picked up on discount an AudioQuest Niagara 1200 mostly because I wanted to protect my system in the event of a power surge/lightning strike (we have *horrible* power issues where I live on a normal day). At the time the dealer offered me a $$$$ cable from them as well to demo. Even with a non blind test, it is clear that the AQ does nothing, cable or not. I guess my system is not "resolving" enough :). Considering my house has standard Romex runs, how much better/worse can it get with a massive end point cable coated in silver/etc.?

After reading advice here, I am going to install a whole-house protector, return the AQ, and replace it with a simple APC power strip. I will say this, the Niagara looks nice and makes it easy to organize cables on the shelf it sits on! If it cannot protect my equipment (all I ever expected) then it's just an expensive cable organizer that looks nice.
 

Haskil

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

This man is very well known to audiophiles, but no more serious than many people, many music lovers who hear the opposite and to whom the technique proves right ...

The digitization of a 33 rpm is indistinguishable from its analog reading : on the hi-fi system which was used for digitization which retains in its 1s and 0s the characteristics of the 33 rpm ...
 

TimVG

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Due to the lack of cabled network in-house, I've installed several powerline network adapters - I've noticed some unwanted 'noise' in my speakers as a consequence of this. Would using this (or a similar) product between help negate some of these effects? My older class A/B amps seem most affected.
 

Urib

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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.

------------
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/
 

Urib

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This man is very well known to audiophiles, but no more serious than many people, many music lovers who hear the opposite and to whom the technique proves right ...

The digitization of a 33 rpm is indistinguishable from its analog reading : on the hi-fi system which was used for digitization which retains in its 1s and 0s the characteristics of the 33 rpm ...
My power was already "dirty" so didn't need to do that.

I once used my power generator to create bad waveforms and tested it on a headphone amp. It made no difference at all.
Does the Furman is any better?
 

milosz

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The only use I could see for any fiddling with the incoming power to one's audio gear would be a device that would regulate power so when there was a bad sag it would use a saturable reactor type system, or an automatically adjusted autotransformer, to bring the power back closer to 115 VAC. And, of course, to bring the voltage down if it ever rose dangerously high. Overvoltage is not common, but brown-outs are something some of us have to contend with, and if you line goes down to 87 VAC it will affect your gear somewhat. I don't think that the AC-to-DC-to-AC inverter type systems are a good solution to sags, because they tend to make a lot of RF noise and the ones with good sine wave output cost lots more than a Sola.

And of course, having surge suppressors ahead of your audio gear is a good idea. It won't make your system sound better, but if your power amp blows up because of a spike, well, dead audio gear doesn't sound very good. Tests poorly on the bench, as well...
 

Head_Unit

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In his Power Demystified (pdf) white paper , Garth Powell uses MusicScope null difference comparisons to illustrate the effect of power conditioners on the output of an audio device. It would be interesting to see if you're able reproduce similar results.
This paper confused me, I had to re-read to glean that apparently they are recording nulled output from an unspecified system with different power feeds. The samples won't play for me. I'd also like to have heard the actual music to A/B. AND to see measurements at the output of the devices like what Amir did. I might get one of these if I think it will give good surge protection, though I favor APC. After I lost an iMac and other problems due to bad electrical my brother took pity on me and gifted me an APC with backup, no more lost iMacs.
 

Trdat

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Personally I use normal power surge protection extenders just for the sake of protection, these kidney costing ones with extra filter always sounds silly to me

I get mine from China for $40 it houses a tiny filter and apparently has surge protection but I buy it for the beautiful aluminium case and its general sturdiness not for any claims. I mean this audioquest is made from plastic and is $300. Now, I have no idea if aluminium is better but the overall build quality is a thousand times better than even my Furman power conditioner. $40 can't go wrong...
 

Maglun

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Had a power outage last week and my Powerquest 2 just died. That's some heavy duty protection right there. Thought I'd have some fun and opened her up. A bit of a better look at what's inside.
Skjermbilde 2021-04-13 kl. 18.09.24.png
 

Chrispy

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Had a power outage last week and my Powerquest 2 just died. That's some heavy duty protection right there. Thought I'd have some fun and opened her up. A bit of a better look at what's inside.View attachment 123810

So there was no fairy fart coating left at all? That thing at least have a UL listing?
 

Maglun

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It's got a CE. I'm euro trash, so no idea about UL. It's supposed to have non-sacrificial surge protection, but I have a feeling it sacrificed itself. It's just a couple of months old and now very, very dead.
 

dfuller

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It's got a CE. I'm euro trash, so no idea about UL. It's supposed to have non-sacrificial surge protection, but I have a feeling it sacrificed itself. It's just a couple of months old and now very, very dead.
the big coil is most of the non-sacrificial surge protection, as I understand it.
 

milosz

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Well it looks like a decently constructed filter and spike eliminator, but there are less expensive units that offer similar surge protection and RFI filtering. It is disappointing that this somewhat expensive device failed when called upon to protect the connected equipment.

As Amirm's testing has shown, this device doesn't filter out any power line noise or harmonics in the audio band, but does filter out noise higher up in the electromagnetic spectrum. RFI filtering can be useful if you live near an AM radio station or other powerful RF source like a welding shop or old-school diathermy therapy equipment. Most audio gear should have good rejection of RF noise on the incoming AC power circuit but there are unusual situations like sharing a line pole transformer with a welding shop where the RF crap on the power line may be of sufficient amplitude that additional filtering could prevent microprocessors from rebooting, or other digital troubles. I have heard noise from an all-analog audio system when arc welding was being done in my building, but as the welding was temporary to do some structural work it wasn't anything I felt it necessary to remedy. And I do not know if the RFI was coming through the power lines or via radiated EMF. Arcs can generate rather a lot of power up into the radio spectrum- in fact the first morse-code transmitters used an arc as the RF power source, band-shaped by resonant circuits feeding the antenna. Arc welding produces similar electromagnetic noise, with random capacitances and inductances changing it's RF behavior as the welding progresses.

If you have RFI problems on your power line, there are cheaper solutions out there than this. And if you actually need good voltage stabilization and harmonic /RFI filtering, buying a used Sola ferroresonant power conditioner would seem to be a better solution than this Audioquest product. I just now saw a 16-amp Sola line conditioner on eBay for $75.
 

pozz

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@amirm Would it be possible for you to do an A/B comparison using something like DeltaWave Audio Null Comparator or MusicScope (download still works)?

In his Power Demystified (pdf) white paper , Garth Powell uses MusicScope null difference comparisons to illustrate the effect of power conditioners on the output of an audio device. It would be interesting to see if you're able reproduce similar results.
That report does not detail the signal chain as far as I can see. Or does it? What's actually being nulled or compared? How is the signal captured?
 

welsh

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Well it looks like a decently constructed filter and spike eliminator, but there are less expensive units that offer similar surge protection and RFI filtering. It is disappointing that this somewhat expensive device failed when called upon to protect the connected equipment.

As Amirm's testing has shown, this device doesn't filter out any power line noise or harmonics in the audio band, but does filter out noise higher up in the electromagnetic spectrum. RFI filtering can be useful if you live near an AM radio station or other powerful RF source like a welding shop or old-school diathermy therapy equipment. Most audio gear should have good rejection of RF noise on the incoming AC power circuit but there are unusual situations like sharing a line pole transformer with a welding shop where the RF crap on the power line may be of sufficient amplitude that additional filtering could prevent microprocessors from rebooting, or other digital troubles. I have heard noise from an all-analog audio system when arc welding was being done in my building, but as the welding was temporary to do some structural work it wasn't anything I felt it necessary to remedy. And I do not know if the RFI was coming through the power lines or via radiated EMF. Arcs can generate rather a lot of power up into the radio spectrum- in fact the first morse-code transmitters used an arc as the RF power source, band-shaped by resonant circuits feeding the antenna. Arc welding produces similar electromagnetic noise, with random capacitances and inductances changing it's RF behavior as the welding progresses.

If you have RFI problems on your power line, there are cheaper solutions out there than this. And if you actually need good voltage stabilization and harmonic /RFI filtering, buying a used Sola ferroresonant power conditioner would seem to be a better solution than this Audioquest product. I just now saw a 16-amp Sola line conditioner on eBay for $75.
I wouldn’t dream of using a power conditioner for home audio, yet when I did gigs the big rigs usually featured Furman? power conditioners… were they more useful in this context? The sound guy said yes. Don’t ask me, I just play guitar.
 
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