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| Letters -- March 2006 Room acoustics March 16, 2006 To Jeff Fritz, In your latest series of "TWBAS" columns, I see you’ve paid great attention to room acoustics. I applaud you for that. I think most readers would be surprised at the room response you achieved with your Wilson speakers, but I also think most audiophiles wouldn’t have the first idea as to how their system and room measures. I will be curious to see how your future reviews shape up now that you know how acoustic issues change the sound so much. Hopefully you’ve achieved the proverbial microscope. Keep up the good work. Ben Levi The room is turning out to be quite a great tool for reviewing audio components. I’m sure many of the changes I’m hearing as I switch gear in and out of the room would not be measured with frequency-response graphs of the system/room, however. I guess that goes to show you that a combination of measured response and listening is still the only way to get the whole picture of what a system is doing….Jeff Fritz Isoclean or…? March 6, 2006 To Mike Silverton, I have a question about using an Isoclean 80A3 (or the 60, 50 models) as a standalone power-line conditioner. I currently use an Exact Power EP-15. Where I have been living, power fluctuations were common, and the EP-15 did help with the sound, but in my new residence, the voltage stays fairly constant at about 120-124V. I'm thinking that the EP-15 may not be the appropriate product at this time and the Isoclean appears to be a viable alternative. According to the EP-15's readout, my system draws less than 250W peak and about 150W average, so I don't think current draw is a big issue. Might the Isoclean products be something I could use, or do you have other suggestions? While I'd love a full-bore Isoclean system with the PR3030 and power cords, we just adopted twin five-year-old boys, so the "discretionary spending" fund has been pretty much depleted. Michael It's been a while since I've had the Isoclean power pieces in my system. At its designer's suggestion, my Aurum Acoustics Integris CD player uses no power conditioning other than that company's modification of the Cardas Golden Reference power cord (the modification consisting of a replacement of the Cardas wall plug with a Wattgate). Either power cord, basic or modified, features a ferrite, which the Integris's designer find beneficial with a digital component. The Mark Levinson No.33H amps, which do some power regeneration of their own, each occupy a dedicated outlet, as does the CDP. However, you're asking me about Isoclean. My sense is that the Isoclean units -- filter(s), transformer(s), power cords -- work best as an ensemble, and as an ensemble are quite expensive, particularly if you follow the manufacturer's recommendations with respect to the number and kind of components you operate. Given your mad-money constraints, I think you're better off remaining with what you have or investigating a less-elaborate power setup. Best of luck with that adoption!...Mike Silverton
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