Soundstage!- Workin' Man Audio with Dave Duvall


December 1996

WHATCHA PLAYIN' WITH NOW, DAVE?
API Power Wedge 116 MkII and 113

Having started to look at power line conditioning with the Power Purifier review, I decided to contact Les Edelberg of Audio Power to check out his Power Wedge line. The Power Wedges are more along the line of "traditional" power conditioning products, and have for many years been considered a staple in the high-end circles. I have come to find that power conditioning is a must once your system has reached a high level of quality and resolution. I won't beat around the bush; the Power Wedges do the job well.

The 116 and 113 models are similar in construction, with the exceptions of their overall intent. The 116 has six isolated outlets (one with reverse polarity for all you polarity sensitive types) for source components, and four for high current drawing amplifiers. The 113 has three isolated outlets (one rated at 270 watts for large direct view or projection screens), and four amp outlets. The 113 was designed for use mainly with Video systems, as the marriage of audio and audio/video seems to have been consummated. Both units are impressive in build quality. Measuring approximately 15" long x 5" wide x 5-1/2" tall, they are weighty and require two hands to move around. Black in color, wedge shaped, with vents on either end, I found the wedges sexy in a mechanical design kinda way. Don't worry; I find the proper things in life much sexier!

The Wedge has a built in 15 amp circuit breaker and MOV's (Metal Oxide Veristors) to protect equipment from power surges, and each pair of outlets are protected by their own fuse. The power is then conditioned with industrial grade, low-noise filters before being sent to a damping circuit to keep the fluctuating power requirements of the amplifier from interfering with source components. Power is then provided to isolation transformers for the source outlets, keeping each pair separate from the others.

The entire Audio Power Industries product line

EXCITING THE NEURONS OF MY MIND......

Les was kind enough to spend a great deal of time with me via phone and E-mail, educating me in all the "dirty power" possibilities. The ultimate goal in cleaning up the incoming AC power, is to filter EVERYTHING that is in any way, shape, or form, connected to the power that feeds your audio (and now video) systems. By doing so we hope to refine the capabilities of your system, taking us one step further down the road to the impossible dream of reality. Cleansing the entire AC circuit would include anything connected via interconnects and anything on the electrical circuit your gear is on. In a semi-perfect world, we would have a circuit that comes straight off the power pole, and is not connected to the service panel for the rest of the home. In a perfect world, we would not even be hooked up to the power grid that juices everybody else's house. Unless your going battery powered (or generator-but I wonder how stable a supply that would be), products like the Power Wedge need to come into play.

As more of us in the Workin' Class realize, affording separate, quality audio and audio/video systems ain't gonna happen. We need to understand how one can affect the other when they are interconnected. Les studied my system and recommended the 116 MkII, 113, and the Mondial Magic to fully condition both systems, which for the purposes of this review are connected primarily via the preamp. The 116 is used on the audio side only, the 113 on the video and audio for video, and the MondialMagic is used to isolate the cable TV ground from the house current ground. Yup, the coax for cable TV can transmit garbage as easily as any AC power cord or interconnect. As most of us who have spent too many hours floating grounds knows, having multiple grounds create ground loops which in turn create a nasty HUM through the speakers. Audio Power also indicates that the isolation features of the Wedge will be defeated:

This is an all or nothing effort, folks. No sense not taking full advantage of the Wedges, by not letting them provide the benefits they were intended to. The kind of education that Les offered me proved invaluable. Rest assured that if you, the consumer, need the level of service that I did; it is available from Audio Power through your dealer. They want to be sure that you are able to appreciate the highest level of quality that their products can provide.

AND NOW THE IMPORTANT STUFF......

I was pleased with the results that I had using the Power Wedges. All observations, unless otherwise noted, are referenced to plugging all 'dem boxes into the wall outlet. On my audio system, I found the bass to be tighter and better articulated. This is an important characteristic to me, since I am somewhat of a bass freak that cannot stand an overrecorded, bloated, boomy butt end of the frequency range. The tautness of the bass proved to be true with either string bass on "Splanky" from Christian Mcbride's "Gettin' To It" (Verve 314 523 989-2) or electric on anything from the Cowboy Junkies, who seem to consistently turn the bass volume knob up to 11.

On "Splanky" we are treated to a trio of wonderful talent of solo string bass from Mcbride, Ray Brown, and Milt Hinton. Without the Wedge the chorus of pluckamania has less definition and distinction. With the Wedge, every note can be heard as belonging to a particular performer. Wall power produced a slight congealing of the three separate, similar instruments being played simultaneously. The Wedge also enhanced the rhythm and drive of the artists tugging at the heartstrings of the acoustic basses. On music from the Cowboy Junkies, the 116 does not seem to allow the normally fat and heavy electric bass of Alan Anton, to get too far out of balance with the rest of the frequency spectrum.

Vocals take on a more palpable sound using the 116. To my ears it is easier to hide minor fault with instrumental timbre, but voices either feel/sound right or they do not. As nice as it would be to have Michael Stipe or Emmy Lou Harris over to sing it live for me, supplying the ultimate reference, one has to base such a comment on gut reaction. Over the years though, you find components that make things sound as you feel they should, and the Power Wedge helped give a sense of rightness to both large and small vocal arrangements.

Paying close attention to massed and solo violin, revealed less stridency and harshness when using the Wedge. When switching to wall juice, I felt slighted when strings did not have the smooth, less irritating, quality that is evident when using the 116. If you don't have a Power Wedge on hand to hear this difference, then grab a copy of "Best of Chesky Classics & Jazz and Audiophile Test Disk Volume 3" (whew!- Chesky JD111), and listen to the recorded demonstration of clean and dirty power on tracks 34 and 35. After listening to the Wedges, I realized how close this recording actually is to what I hear with power conditioning.

While the Power Wedge did bring about noticeable change to depth and layering of the soundstage, I yearned for a bit more of the air and bloom that I hear when using the TAD Systems Power Purifier. Keep in mind that these two products operate on different designs and principals, so one might expect them to perform differently. A little bit of an apples to oranges thing in the respect that the Power Wedge line provides power surge suppression as well as RFI filtering; whereas the Power Purifier works in a range just below where RFI would cut in, and does not protect your gear from power spikes. Hard to have your cake and eat it too. My home does not present any audible RFI problems, so I'll have to pass on commenting as to the effectiveness of the Wedge's RFI prevention capabilities. I also wrestled with feelings of large scale dynamics being slightly lessened when having the amp plugged into the Power Wedge, as compared to the wall. In the end I decided that this was not a detriment to the enjoyment of the music.

On the subject of focus, using the 116 provided excellent improvement to perceived resolution of events within the soundstage. The increase in image focus and resolution was on the level I heard when I first discovered how good the I2S format was, compared to SP/DIF. The background is more continuous, rather than defined, and the spaces between musical events are quiet. Of particular note, was the ability to hear more of the extraneous environmental noise heard on "Witches Brew" (Classic LSCCD 2225). While I am not so sure this is a plus, it was certainly recorded at the session, and demonstrates the ability of the 116 to flesh out low level detail. The Wedge also gave me the impression of a lowered noise floor, which was further pointed out when I experimented with the Audio Alchemy V3.0 DAC feeding the McCormack DNA-1 amp direct. As much as I prefer the sound using the Audible Illusions L-1 line stage preamp in the system, tubes are noisy and you can hear them as a low hiss in the quiet passages or when you approach the speaker. With the DAC feeding the amp, the electronic noise is lessened, and the differences that the Power Wedge makes vs. the wall outlet become even more evident. One of my Sovtek 6922 tubes, even though measures well, had gone slightly noisy and demonstrated a minor crackling sound to the low hiss that the tubes naturally have. Let it be noted that the other tube's noise was down in level to where it was not audible at the listening position. Just prior to publication, a new set of low noise 6922's brought peace and tranquility back into my life.

Lastly to report on the use of the Model 113 with my audio/video system. If your surround processor is connected through a tape loop or another input on your preamp, you need the 113 to insure that you're not polluting the music side of things with RFI and power line trash via interconnects from the audio/video components. The 113 proved effective, in the same fashion as the 116 did with my audio system, on the Rotel amps I use to power the center and surround channels and my Fosgate 5 surround processor. What was really slick was that the picture quality of my LD player and VCR. The picture from both sources took on a more vivid contrast, while I found no noticeable improvement with cable TV. I found this to happen with the Power Purifier as well, so there must be something to feeding video sources clean AC. Okay, I'll stop-this isn't a videophile magazine. The point I want to stress is that if your two systems are combined, be sure to condition them both or you may be detracting from the performance of the Power Wedge's capabilities.

SUM IT UP DAVE, WE'VE GOT MUSIC TO LISTEN TO.......

If you are ready to take an above average or high resolution system to the next level the Power Wedge products are a must audition . The power conditioning field is made up of a wide, diverse group of philosophies, but that is the kind of thing that makes this hobby fun. No one way proves to be the best for all systems, and though it takes time and effort, it is all worth it when you find a product that enhances the performance of your labor of love. Explore the possibilities of power line conditioning, and be sure to make the Power Wedge line part of that process. I hope you find them, as I did, to be beneficial in refining the sound capabilities of your system.

...Dave Duvall

Power Wedge Model 116 Mk II: $639.00
Power Wedge Model 113: $639.00

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Audio Power Industries
2624 South Rouselle St.
Santa Ana, CA. 92707
714-545-9495 (phone)
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