Is Power Conditioner Or PLC Another improvement to the Sound

After setting up the Edifier C3 with some speaker isolation, I try to find more approaches that able to improve the sound. So after googling and asking around, I plan to improve the sound of Edifier C3 by conditioning my power source. Therefore, I started to search for a budget power conditioner aka PLC. In my search for a power conditioner, I came to summarize it to 2 main categories. 1 is the passive type while another is the active type. We can go deeper into the categories and theories but that is not casual anymore XD.

From my understanding, the passive type power conditioner:
- tend to condition the power source without affecting the original sound as much as possible
- able to reduce the background noises in a song
- most likely able to protect your gadgets from power surge or lightning (it also depend on the lightning power)

The active type power conditioner:
- the sound is being pass through filter that may affect the sound
- tend to be able to reduce the background noises in a song better than passive type at the same price but at the same time the song may lost some details in the process
- mostly likely to have more extra features than passive type at the same price

And there seem to be something to be taken note before choosing to use power conditioner or not:
- power conditioners will take away some of the dynamic in the sound although these became less and less significant with more expensive model
- this problem seem to be non noticeable only on models that priced around RM 10k or more
- these lost of dynamic in sound is more significant if your amplifier draw more power

Soundstage SAVR-2000 (Active Type Power Conditioner)
After knowing these facts, I look back at my setup, Edifier C3 and a budget desktop with built in graphic. These seem to be low power consumption. Therefore, I went and purchased a budget active type power conditioner for the extra feature which is Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR). I bought it at RM 999 and it is branded as Soundstage (a local company) with the model name SAVR-2000.

Testing
I plug my desktop and Edifier C3 straight to the SAVR-2000 and power it up. There is only 2 settings for me to play around which are the "Delay" and "Precision". I can set the Delay to either 3 minutes or 6 seconds. Setting the Delay to 6 seconds resulted in a lot more background noise when comparing to 3 minutes. The Precision setting don't seem to have much noticeable different.

Below is the picture of the power conditioner when powering my desktop and C3. The current (A) column always show 0.0 and sometimes show 0.1 which mean that this setup is very low power consumption. Change the desktop to my gaming dekstop, "pop" the current (A) column straight away jump to 2.2 at idle @@. Gaming rig sure are power hunger -.-'''

Results
So I started the test with the Delay set at 3 minutes and Precision set at High. The setup is the Edifier C3 with speaker isolation connected to UD100. The music player is Foobar2000 with kernel streaming.

After having the power conditioner, the background noises are reduced a lot. The bass seem to be better controlled without getting so bloomy. This is maybe due to the noticeable reduce in dynamic of the song. The vocal seem to be color as this is an active type power conditioner. It depend on personal tastes whether the coloration is good or bad. For me, the coloration is acceptable. Below is the recordings from my phone with the song played at 60% volume and bass at -3.

Without power conditioner:

With power conditioner:

These recording just serve as references and may not fully represent live listening condition.

Conclusion
The price for a budget power conditioner seem to be a little bit steep for casual users. However, it does have improvements such as:
- lower background noise
- better controlled bass
with some flaws as well:
- loss of dynamic
- coloration of vocal

Therefore, if you prefer quiet listening experience, it is worth to get a power conditioner. If not, I personally think that try getting a better speaker + amplifier + DAC that total cost over RM5k or RM10k first before getting a power conditioner.