Your audio system marries electrical current from the wall outlet to a complex representation of music from your source, hopefully creating an engaging listening experience in your room. However, the adage, garbage-in, garbage-out, applies. Feed your system a mediocre recording, and it will fail to inspire. Feeding it noisy power, too often, produces the same result. The insidious thing about power quality is that most of us won’t know if we have an issue until it’s gone. The impact is that too few audiophiles explore power conditioning solutions. Why spend hundreds or thousands of dollars solving a problem you’re not even sure that you have?
Enter iFi Audio. They have more power conditioning products than some audio companies have products of any kind. I have tried almost all of them and can assure you that they are not “snake-oil”; they actually deliver value that, IMHO, exceeds their price, especially when compared to alternatives. iFi Audio’s flagship power product is the relatively new PowerStation, a beefy metal eight-outlet (US) conditioner with excellent performance and industrial design.
Although $499 is quite reasonable for an audiophile solution, if you’re just dipping a toe into this space, I’d suggest starting with its predecessor, the AC iPurifier. At less than a fifth the price, it’s a low-risk way to discover what’s possible. Plus, if you like what the AC iPurifier does, it can be used with the PowerStation for an even more significant impact. Just make sure that you plug it into the same wall outlet that’s powering your system. If you have an existing power strip, experiment with plugging the AC iPurifier into an unused outlet.
Most interesting among the technologies that the PowerStation and AC iPurifier employ to do their jobs is what iFi Audio calls Active Noise Cancellation®. Think of it like active noise-canceling headphones, but for audio power; they generate a signal identical to that of the incoming electrical noise but opposite in phase, actively canceling it. This is why the AC iPurifier must be plugged into the same receptacle or power strip as your gear for the best results.
These products test your power feed, indicating problems found via a pair of colored LEDs–one for ground and the other for polarity. As you’d expect, there’s also protection from voltage surges. Unlike other products in this category that I’ve tried, they have an intelligent ground port (looks like a single banana-plug receptacle) that may be used to ensure proper chassis ground for your equipment without unintentionally creating a ground-loop. This feature is designed to work with iFi Audio’s Groundhog+ kit, but if you’re handy, it’s not hard to terminate most cables with a banana plug to test the concept in your system. Ungrounded components, like DACs and streamers, which are usually powered by an SMPS, can benefit significantly by having a clean path to ground.
Unlike most power conditioners, if you’re inclined to experiment with 3rd party power cords, you’re free to do so with the PowerStation, thanks to its standard IEC inlet socket. There’s also a heavy-duty rocker switch for shutting things down. From inlet to ground and outlets, tolerances on the PowerStation are tight. The force required to plug something in is not excessive but easily double what I experience with other power conditioners. This is actually a good thing since a tight grip means less chance of micro-arcing. That and nothing is coming unplugged by accident.
The final question you may have is, “how does the PowerStation sound?” That’s tough to answer since, unless something has gone horribly wrong, a power conditioner has no sound. The effect its presence has on my system is most apparent when I remove it, replacing it with a typical A/V power strip. Soundstage collapses noticeably, vocals become harsher, and giving my full attention to the music until the end of whatever album I’m playing takes real effort. Put the iFi PowerStation back in, and I return to playing albums from start to finish, fully engaged. Adding a couple more of AC iPurifiers, one to the 2nd wall receptacle and one to separate analog and digital components plugged into the PowerStation (as iFi Audio recommends) adds just a bit more engagement. Enough, in fact, that I’ve sugged to iFi Audio that they consider selling the PowerStation and two AC iPurifiers as a bundled product.
In summary, if you have not explored power conditioning in your audio system, iFi Audio is a great place to start. For me, it has also been a great place to end up. I’m confident that I’m getting power performance that would cost many times what I’ve spent had I selected competing products from Furutech, AudioQuest, Shunyata Research, and others. If you’re on the fence, I encourage you to give the AC iPurifer a try and have the PowerStation on your system roadmap.
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