A Review: You think Furman power conditioners are worthless?

[billfitzmaurice]

Some EE needs to chime in, but it is my understanding that a power conditioner is pretty much worthless. All the power going into your amp or nearly any other 110 v musical device goes through a transformer first, which is a power conditioner in itself.

Not only a transformer, but also rectifiers that convert the AC to DC (all gear runs on DC), capacitors to filter that DC, and voltage regulators to stabilize the DC. If you wonder if your amp really needs 'conditioned' power ask QSC, or any other high-end manufacturer. They'll say no.
Like expensive cables and drugs to treat Restless Leg Syndrome power 'conditioners' 'fix' problems we never knew we had until these cures were concocted to treat them.

 

[onlyclave]

Not only a transformer, but also rectifiers that convert the AC to DC (all gear runs on DC), capacitors to filter that DC, and voltage regulators to stabilize the DC. If you wonder if your amp really needs 'conditioned' power ask QSC, or any other high-end manufacturer. They'll say no.
Like expensive cables and drugs to treat Restless Leg Syndrome power 'conditioners' 'fix' problems we never knew we had until these cures were concocted to treat them.

*sigh* Why did you have to go there? The OP was wondering about the quality of Furman products.

But your comment is spoken like a true person who cannot understand or hear the differences in performance with and without power conditioning equipment. A majority of conditioning products out there are based on circuit designs by Bell Labs from back in the '30s, so apparently the problem of noise induced on a powerline has been long recognized and the snake oil has been flowing for a long time, right?

If you want to ask a high end manufacturer about the benefits of power conditioning I suggest you look to people like Jeff Rowland, Demian Martin, Richard Marsh and Stan Klyne since they are some of the worlds authorities on high end audio gear.

At the end of the day though, I don't really care what you do. You can wave your EE degree in my face. My rig is going to sound better than yours. Period.

 

[dje]

If you want more solid build quality I might suggest the Elite15i. Same unit (SMP+, LiFT, EVS), nicer fit and finish, and it costs $379.

I would like to thank you for your effort, but let's examine some logic. It has been established that Furman had a quality problem with the unit I bought. In fact, it sucked balls. Your solution is that I go back to the same company and pay them more money. I don't get it.

I don't work for Furman but I am a distributor of theirs and I know the engineers in Petaluma.

Wait, yes I do.

For the record, I do not think power conditioners are snake oil. Mode 1 suppressors do reduce earth ground problems, and series mode protection is not a bad idea.

It should be noted that Furman does not rate its products to the relevant UL, ANSI, or U.S. government standards for surge suppression.

 

[eedre]

Some EE needs to chime in, but it is my understanding that a power conditioner is pretty much worthless. All the power going into your amp or nearly any other 110 v musical device goes through a transformer first, which is a power conditioner in itself.

With that said, I have a cheap Furman (PL-8?). No bells or whistles at all. 8 outlets and an on/off switch. I use it to save the wear and tear on my other power switches and it makes a nice outlet gang device. The guitarist even plugs his Rivera into it. One switch kills our entire side of the stage.

It helps to have a short path to ground breaker when there is a surge.

REAL conditioning is called regulation. There is some irregularity in any DC power source called ripple (often less than 2 mV discrepancy) that is dependent on the time constant of a capacitor. Even these things have maximum voltage ratings - the higher the more expensive, which is why regulators are so pricey. However, this is a regulation circuit, NOT a protection circuit. My guess is, your amp already has something like this in it. But it never hurts to lower that ripple even more

 

[Bob Lee (QSC)]

But your comment is spoken like a true person who cannot understand or hear the differences in performance with and without power conditioning equipment.

No, I don't think Bill is the one who doesn't understand power "conditioning."

My rig is going to sound better than yours. Period.

Maybe, if you're a better player than he.

 

[Buster Brown]

I've got a relatively "old" one (the RP-8L)...paid somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 bucks for mine. Sits in the rack and does ONE and only ONE glorious thing for me.....I have ONE cord to deal with and only ONE.

Doesn't seem like a big deal the majority of the time, but were it not for that (or a similar power strip) I would usually run out of outlets....bummer

 

[onlyclave]

I would like to thank you for your effort, but let's examine some logic. It has been established that Furman had a quality problem with the unit I bought. In fact, it sucked balls. Your solution is that I go back to the same company and pay them more money. I don't get it.

Then throw your **** away and stop whining. Simple enough.

 

[greenboy]

Then throw your **** away and stop whining. Simple enough.

So you are saying the consumer doesn't really have a right to express opinions about quality/performance after he's spent his hard-earned cash - unless it reflects favorably in entirety on the companies one might have a vested interest in?

On a DISCUSSION forum, even? Guess that'll make a few less topics all around. Bandwidth will be conserved.

 

[onlyclave]

So you are saying the consumer doesn't really have a right to express opinions about quality/performance after he's spent his hard-earned cash - unless it reflects favorably in entirety on the companies one might have a vested interest in?

On a DISCUSSION forum, even? Guess that'll make a few less topics all around. Bandwidth will be conserved.

I think Furman builds a good product that performs better than most of the stuff out there. You can go buy similar stuff from Monster, Panamax, Tripplite, Zerosurge, Isotek, Shunyata, APC, etc. Furman's power conditioners work well and you could certainly do a lot worse.

If the OP wanted his light tubes to not feel so wobbly, then I told him his solution. Or he can just return it and put his hard earned cash back in his pocket. The QSC guy and the build your own speaker kit guy have things they would rather sell him anyway.

 

[greenboy]

The QSC guy and the build your own speaker kit guy have things they would rather sell him anyway.

Bob's a straight-up guy who likes to talk engineering and has cred. And I doubt anyone who is putting a cab design into the public domain and has no plans to market any designs now or in the future is going to express untoward bias about something entirely unrelated. In other words I'M NOT SELLING ANYTHING ; }

Perhaps you need to watch how you represent sales alliances here on TB as well as not going for cheap slurs like that one.

 

[dje]

Sorry, don't take your frustrations on the Furman out on me.. I think that was pretty unnecessary.

That wasn't my intention. People read these threads to learn, and throwing out buzzwords to sound credible is only discouraging to those who haven't been in our business.

In case you haven't noticed, I have a somewhat sarcastic style, and I will apologize for that because it is not always appropriate in a forum.

We all must agree, watching the Furman distributor dig a deeper hole is hilarious.

 

[Interceptor]

Well, I can't take a hard line against power conditioners.

As was stated earlier, Bell labs long ago saw a need for shunting surge energy external to critical equipment as well as the need to band limit AC.

As an engineer who has spent over thirty years optimizing broadcast and recording gear for a living, my impression is the impact (and need) of these countermeasures varies widely depending on the design of the power supply and grounding of the gear in question. Additionally, the environment a device is going to be used in matters. Are SCR based dimmers on the same "drop" side of the power company transformer? Does the location have three phase distribution? Are there motors on the drop side of the transformer? How much current is flowing on the ground circuit of the distribution circuit? What is the spectral distribution of 60 Hz harmonics?

It is a case of your mileage may vary. Some pieces of gear are oblivious; they will be fine anywhere. Others are always in need of help. The audible results I've experienced are a reduced "grunge" or muddiness. I can't stress enough - it is very subjective.

FWIW, I use an AC > DC > AC power system together with AC bandpass filtering and isolated grounds for any of the studios I've constructed. It is a brute force method, but I don't have to revisit them for weird problems after they are operational.

I just plug my bass head "into the wall" at gigs. Noise masking in a live environment will more than bury any gains that power conditioning would have made. I've never lost a bass head due to a surge since first giiging in the mid 70's!

 

[Geddyfleaharris]

Friday night fights. hmmm

I have a Furman. Just a low end ML-8. I like it and as one poster said just one cord to plug in for powering your rack gear. If all my rack gear doesn't need a surge protector because of current build quality.......then great - it just means that I have a rack mounted power strip. No biggy.

We apologize for the interruption and return you to the program already in progress.

 

[Kelly Lee]

Enough is enough. This thread is now closed.

BTW, I have done some editing/deleting of posts but I'm leaving the rest up so everyone can see who was doing what and have a better idea about them.