[lcaillo]

Hmm, good question, but tough to answer. I have not actually seen the effects. I hold open the possibility in order to remain objective. Also, many people have reported seeing improvements. Any time lots of people report an experience I assume that there is some reason that is not just mass placebo effect. What I have heard reported are changes in contrast, background noise, brightness, color saturation, and ringing on edges. Since all of these can be associated with ground loops and ground noise, I assume that most of the effect comes from creating a common ground point in the line conditioner. I also assume so because I have heard of the same kinds of improvements when users connect a surge suppressor that protects signal lines, where again, the grounds get tied together. I have analyzed the matter from every angle that I can approach practically and done a fair amount of testing and my best guess is that many people simply end up cleaning up ground problems and this likely is the reason that they think that they get an improvement due to a line conditioner. There is also the possibility that there are "golden eyes" analogous to "golden ears" that see things that I do not. There is also the possiblility that some people are just deluded by expectation bias and believe what they want to believe about their perceptions. I just try to figure out the underlying effects that might be present in the technology.

We simply never run into noise issues in our systems, unless there are interconnections between components at a great distance and we get ground or induced noise. We nearly always solve these by placing circuits on the same breaker or at least the same bus, or by fixing ground or shielding issues. Occasionally, when there is not another practical solution, we use isolation transformers, but this is very very rare. We sometimes use more expensive line conditioners in elaborate systems, but most just use basic Panamax surge protectors and good grounding practice.