This is a review and detailed measurements of the vintage Tice TPT Enhanced Line Conditioner/enhancer. It was kindly sent to me by a member. I can't find its original cost (used is about $100):
Despite the use of dovetails on the sides, this is a very cheap looking box. The cord and termination are typical household products which today no one would be caught dead using.
There is very little historic information about this box. But there is a ton on how Tice got its reputation: modifying a Radio Shack clock to improve the sound fidelity in your room! The thing was called the Tice Clock.
The product here seems to just be something you just plug into to the wall in parallel with your cords (there is no outlet). The back box was glued but I was able to pry it off to peak inside:
Seems like they just wrapped the wire every which way and then poured some kind of goop and cured hard giving the unit some weight.
Tice TPT Enhanced Line Conditioner Measurements
As usual, we start with measuring my current power line quality (an industrial power strip that is feeding all of my gear including audio equipment being tested):
I am using a 100:1 attenuator so the voltage is 122.3 volts. As usual in addition to our primary tone at 60 Hz which we are interested in, a bunch of harmonic distortion and noise comes for the ride. Let's now plug the Tice in parallel and see if anything changes:
Nothing changes other than typical run to run variations. But maybe the magic is above audible band. Let's go crazy with a 1 MHz bandwidth (50X human hearing) spectrum measurement:
Despite measuring down some 25 dB below threshold of hearing, we see nothing different. Which is as it should be as there is nothing in this box that would do anything to the AC waveform other than presenting an antenna to pick up more noise.
Tice TPT Enhanced Listening Tests
I used my everyday setup of my computer driving RME ADI-2 Pro audio interface driving my Dan Clark Stealth headphones. I listened with the Tice TPT Enhanced plugged in and not. Either with fast AB or longer listening, there was no difference whatsoever observable by my ears.
Conclusions
It is "good" to dig into some of the early products that started this audio tweak business. While not one of their more popular products, we can see that the secret sauce was some goop which is commonly used to pot electronics. It presents no effect on AC waveform and even if it did, your audio gear already has industrial strength filtering so wouldn't make a difference.
----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome. Click here if you have some audio gear you want me to test.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Despite the use of dovetails on the sides, this is a very cheap looking box. The cord and termination are typical household products which today no one would be caught dead using.
There is very little historic information about this box. But there is a ton on how Tice got its reputation: modifying a Radio Shack clock to improve the sound fidelity in your room! The thing was called the Tice Clock.
The product here seems to just be something you just plug into to the wall in parallel with your cords (there is no outlet). The back box was glued but I was able to pry it off to peak inside:
Seems like they just wrapped the wire every which way and then poured some kind of goop and cured hard giving the unit some weight.
Tice TPT Enhanced Line Conditioner Measurements
As usual, we start with measuring my current power line quality (an industrial power strip that is feeding all of my gear including audio equipment being tested):
I am using a 100:1 attenuator so the voltage is 122.3 volts. As usual in addition to our primary tone at 60 Hz which we are interested in, a bunch of harmonic distortion and noise comes for the ride. Let's now plug the Tice in parallel and see if anything changes:
Nothing changes other than typical run to run variations. But maybe the magic is above audible band. Let's go crazy with a 1 MHz bandwidth (50X human hearing) spectrum measurement:
Despite measuring down some 25 dB below threshold of hearing, we see nothing different. Which is as it should be as there is nothing in this box that would do anything to the AC waveform other than presenting an antenna to pick up more noise.
Tice TPT Enhanced Listening Tests
I used my everyday setup of my computer driving RME ADI-2 Pro audio interface driving my Dan Clark Stealth headphones. I listened with the Tice TPT Enhanced plugged in and not. Either with fast AB or longer listening, there was no difference whatsoever observable by my ears.
Conclusions
It is "good" to dig into some of the early products that started this audio tweak business. While not one of their more popular products, we can see that the secret sauce was some goop which is commonly used to pot electronics. It presents no effect on AC waveform and even if it did, your audio gear already has industrial strength filtering so wouldn't make a difference.
----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome. Click here if you have some audio gear you want me to test.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
This is about as basic as it gets.
