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ISOTEK EVO3 Aquarius Power Conditioner Review

Rate this product:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 209 93.3%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 6 2.7%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 4 1.8%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 5 2.2%

  • Total voters
    224

restorer-john

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Sort of. The problem with UPS is that invariably the battery goes bad in them and you incur that cost. Or that the unit itself goes bad. I had had both happen a number of times.

Or like my UPS which uses 45 Watts just running online. Mine sits in the PC cupboard gathering dust now, the battery is (surprisingly) still fine, but I could not justify the 24/7 power usage for that one time (maybe) that I might need 15 minutes of PC power.

IIRC, internally it has two or three secondary taps it switches between to maintain the output at 230V if there are fluctuations. Then if too far out of spec, it switches to battery-inverter and beeps its head off!
 

PeteL

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Not on that medium. What about all the rave reviews? I bet you none of those reviewers actually bought the thing. And at the very least they knew full well what kind of prose would come out of this. If they were really interested in not misleading customers, they would not have send the units in for review.
Yes many people imagine stuff. That’s a demonstrated fact. But I was not commenting on the reviewers rigour, I’m not so much an adept of conspiracy theories neither. If you say so.
 

strummr

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The question as it has been posed already: 'it can't be measured, but can you hear a difference'... if you can, then how much of a premium do you want to pay for your perceived faith, and of your unique hearing. (along the lines of 'measurements do not matter, it's about making a decision based on what you think... ' - which I've seen plenty on AVS forum and others... )
 

AdamG

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Seems like another missed opportunity to break out the Panther raiding the Piggy! Exactly what does this do other then relieve the Buyer of $2K?

Maybe we should consider adding another level to the rating scale? Like Zero! As in this product is without value or worthless therefore it gets no value score. Giving it a 1 is cheating or grading on a curve. ;)

1582071105179.png
 

Billy Budapest

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Did anyone really expect something serious from this?
Are those chokes, capacitors, handful of resistors, and transformer affixed into some sort of goo or potting compound? What’s the point of that?
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DualTriode

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Computer power supplies (desktops, rank mount) will have power factor corrected power supplies. Ditto for commercial lighting.

New maybe?

There are still many existing buildings with smoking hot K-Rated transformers that supply switch mode power supply computers and lighting.

When was the last time you saw a cube farm of Herman Miller partitions removed?
 

radix

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Im not sure if someone mentioned this, but clearly the ISOTEK is intended for HIRES audio where the listening window goes out to 180 kHz or more for those 388 kHz tracks :).

Wow, $2000. I don't see paying that for power. I have a basic Furman for general protection and so I can completely turn off the whole system with a single switch when not in use. We mostly have above-ground power here, so in storms we can get some nasty stuff happening.
 

audio2design

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That’s a “ god of the gaps” or “Russell’s teapot” kind of argument ?

There *could* be a case , hence Amir really can’t test every single one of theses absurd devices so an audiophile can always argue that in his setup he “heard” the night and day difference .

Science can’t really prove a null . For example “there is no Santa clause” have you really looked everywhere and if you did he might have left the place before you came ? So you have to start over again.

So one has to decide what’s reasonable. In case of expensive power accessories I think we can leave the subject until proven otherwise and spend time pursuing something else .

There are a few ways to be “rigth” but actually an infinite ways to be wrong , with this kind of logic one should test *all* of the weird tweaks out there . Wonder if we can use an infinite amount of monkeys listening to audio tweaks to find a working one :)

Of course there might be some corner case especially in radio frequencies where older hifi can demodula AM Radio or similar.

Then a device like this could do something, mostly by chance as the primary design goal is to filter out money from uninformed customers rather than filtering any gunk from the net.

Amir have tested a fair share of power tweaks already.

Unless you are injecting common mode you are not really testing, but then again, all that is needed to provide it does "something" would be a ground loop with some higher frequency noise. Ground loops are almost by definition common mode, and those big common mode toroids are probably effectively to relatively low frequencies depending on the core material. Large cores like that usually are not great at high frequencies (and have no need to be that large). There are of course other ways to get rid of ground loops. I use USB isolators for instance.

Given I stated it is grossly over priced and unnecessary unless you have a problem, most of what you wrote is saying what exactly?
 

audio2design

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New maybe?

There are still many existing buildings with smoking hot K-Rated transformers that supply switch mode power supply computers and lighting.

When was the last time you saw a cube farm of Herman Miller partitions removed?

If there is a desk top or rack mount computer in operation still, short of a PDP-11 running some crazy old controls/factory stuff, then it has a PFC front end. It's been standard for ages. I won't say there are no magnetic ballast fluorescent lights any more, but they would be rare. The ones in old desks would only be 20 watts are so, and would be a small load compared to desktop computers. Vast majority of commercial installations long ago ripped out the magnetic ballasts and put in electronics. A lot of laptop supplies are not PFC corrected though.
 

audio2design

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Are those chokes, capacitors, handful of resistors, and transformer affixed into some sort of goo or podding compound? What’s the point of that?

Well at least it is better assembled than that Carver amp abomination :)

Unless they had issues of the heavy inductors breaking traces traces, there is not a lot of value. It would help creepage and clearance distance on the PCB and stop wires from breaking. Potting compound isn't that cheap. It looks like black epoxy. I am not sure you can get urethane in black, and silicone would not stick to the tops of the MOVs like that.
 

pablolie

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There is a point in protecting your equipment. That doesn't require any filtering/conditioning gimmicks. Especially with good Class-D amplification which has a lot of filtering (necessarily) built in. Expensive conditioning/filtering equipment may be even detrimental (even when it performs and delivers on the promise, unlike this one) if you have Ncore or Purifi stuff.
 

MacCali

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I really hope someone can send you in a panamax m5400 and an apc15
I got an APC discontinued model, not sure if it's worth it to send it in since no one can use it. I am not using for cleaning my AC noise, but rather voltage regulation.

I doubt besides that it can honestly provide anything, however as I have stated before to my ears it's doing something to the sound whether it's good or bad I cant say for certain. Virtually sounds the same, APC H15. I only use it for AVR so mostly I am getting dialogue which is probably indistinguishable

@McFly you can pick up one of those Cyberpower UPS for a 100 at costco, it's not the sinewave version. I use both in my house, I believe it's the 1350 and 1500, and the 1500 being the sinewave equivalent. Unless the battery is feeding power when connected into the wall it should make no difference, once the battery kicks on it should definitely do something.

Even then, as he has tested previously, providing electronics with extremely dirty power with that machine. The measurements are not suffering, the unit itself is filtering. So absolutely cant see what's going on. I stated in the Niagra 1200 review, cant say if it's true or not or if it's even possible, it's just what I have heard from a reviewer who suggests never using one. That conditioners themselves have sonic tone which maybe what gets all these guys crazy wild that power conditioners are real and do make a difference. No clue, cause I'll never waste my money on the crap.
 
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amirm

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@McFly you can pick up one of those Cyberpower UPS for a 100 at costco, it's not the sinewave version. I use both in my house, I believe it's the 1350 and 1500, and the 1500 being the sinewave equivalent.
I use their sine wave UPS because it is the only company making a 1RU version of that with no fan. Two batteries have gone bad (between two units) over five or so years. And one died altogether.
 

MacCali

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I use their sine wave UPS because it is the only company making a 1RU version of that with no fan. Two batteries have gone bad (between two units) over five or so years. And one died altogether.
According to them the life span is or the battery should be changed every 2 years. So I wouldn't doubt it if issues do arrive quickly, however I just use it for my PC. I'll tell you so far the most recent time the power cut off and the unit I guess lagged and everything shut down and powered back up when the battery kicked on and I only have the TV and PC on battery back up which is eating about 650 watts. Fortunately that was once, previously there was no lag not sure if the unit took a dump or not.
 

pablolie

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I use their sine wave UPS because it is the only company making a 1RU version of that with no fan. Two batteries have gone bad (between two units) over five or so years. And one died altogether.
Personally I am sick of UPS home systems (which I religiously used for my home workstation environment for many years, not for my audio) because the batteries die and the system goes berserk beeping while the replacement arrives... and my problem isn't keeping the system going for another hour (what good is that?), it's simply protecting it from overvoltage and spikes and damage, which cheaper stuff without as much maintenance will do. I have my UPS with a new battery after the old one died and the system beeped annoyingly at times... but I haven't reconnected it, and I don't notice the difference.
 
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amirm

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Personally I am sick of UPS home systems (which I use for my home workstation environment, not for my audio) because the batteries die and the system goes berserk beeping while the replacement arrives...
The beeping is so annoying. It has no place in most situations as you can tell the lights are out and such. It is a pain to wake up in the middle of night with UPS beeping.

FYI my usage is special. We have a whole house generator that kicks in on power failure. But has 30 second warm up delay before it powers the house. So for that 30 seconds, the UPS kicks in and keeps everything from shutting down and restarting.
 

pablolie

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...

FYI my usage is special. We have a whole house generator that kicks in on power failure. But has 30 second warm up delay before it powers the house. So for that 30 seconds, the UPS kicks in and keeps everything from shutting down and restarting.
In covid times I moved to my little cabin in the Mendocino area. For anyone that doesn't know - it's about 2 hours north of San Francisco in a beautiful wild area close to the ocean. Power outages are super common here. For work, I got the company issued laptop which of course will stay powered up forever, and my smartphone's hotspot will keep us going. I do have a minimalist alternative power system, small solar and a generator if things get really bad (I live with a British Shorthair cat that looks at me sideways if things get cold or a black bear explores our backyard - he's exclusively indoors so don't think I expose him to danger) but the audio equipment simply does with a good surge protector (and they claim filter, but hey) from Furman. I think it's called something like the PS 8D or something. I have never ever in my life noticed an audible improvement from sophisticated power stuff, and I have what I recall was an expensive unit from a company called AudioPower in storage, that thing was heavy and looked great. But never made an audible difference.
 
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