ISOTEK EVO3 Corvus Mains conditioner

daverob

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Would much appreciate views by those who currently use the ISOTEK EVO3 Corvus Mains conditioner.
 
I gave up experimenting with mains conditioners 10 years ago, they can do some good things with noisy digital sources but always lost dynamics and overall preferred without. Moving to a well constructed mains supply can provide real benefits but expensive extensions I’m very very doubtful of

If you want a good mains extension use Olson as they are hard wired and use real sockets

if you can install a seperate CU direct from the incoming mains and feed each fuse to a single socket with over spec cable (eg 6 or 10A) this will reduce impedence and provide very worthwhile gains. I’m a big fan of improving mains but it’s more about avoiding weak earthing and high impedence than filtering

A full solution can be affordable - less than £1k all done £600 on an extension is not a wise investment imo
 
Other things which are worth while are isolating transformators and power regenerators like Power-inspired AG1500W.
 
many thanks to IWC Dopple and sebna for your comments, much appreciated. Good to hear alternative views. But would still like to hear from a AV Member who has the ISOTEK EVO3.
 
Hec92 - was wondering just how informative your reply is to my original question?
 
moderators - can you please tell me what has happened to the reply sent by Hec92 - which prompted my reply on Saturday? for those who are looking at my original question they must be wondering why has he replied that way - and for what reason. Many thanks
 
moderators - can you please tell me what has happened to the reply sent by Hec92 - which prompted my reply on Saturday? for those who are looking at my original question they must be wondering why has he replied that way - and for what reason. Many thanks
He was banned and all his posts were deleted.
 
Many thanks to Sebna and Derek S-H for your replies, very grateful. Perhaps now I can continue to ask AV Forums members for their thoughts to my original question?
 
Many thanks to Sebna and Derek S-H for your replies, very grateful. Perhaps now I can continue to ask AV Forums members for their thoughts to my original question?

Why don't you have one on demo ? If you have a forum member who has bought it they may well be very happy and say how great it is. Either because it is, or because they haven't A-B's and assumed it was better/believed it was better. I also think you need to appreciate that it will inevitably depend on your system, mains and preferences.

As I say I have tried a number over the years and they all went back, replacing power supplies is much more effective. But all the in line conditioners I tried slugged dynamics in my system (I tried the best Isotek has to offer - over £2k, about 10 years ago)
 
Many thanks IWC Dopplel for the info given. I have tried one or two local sources to see if they will give me one on demo - no luck. I have been researching further the pro/cons of main conditioners and the split is very much 50/50. You have a really good system, so I can understand why you ultimately decided to return the conditioners you had under review. Next step, in a very long one - will be to contact an electrician to test my power supply and then to consider whether to replace my power supply, or not.
 
Electricians might not fully appreciate the 'need' or benefit. Here is a diagram that I was given in my old house, its really the separate CU for the cinema room and feeding each plug independently with over rated cables.

Screenshot 2020-09-30 at 11.13.28.png
 
Hi - to retrofit that in an existing house would be a reasonable cost I presume. My house is relatively new (13yrs old) and it seems that age of house doesn’t have a lot of impact on noisy mains. I was provided a DC filter for my sub and that has reduced the sub humming dramatically. So I’m wondering what problem you would like to solve with a mains conditioner- george
 
All I did in my old house was to get a very thick armoured cable (it was something like 160A, from memory) laid under ground between my incomer and the cinema room (at the time the cinema room was in the basement and difficult to internally wire to) then they fitted a CU to the cable as it came in through the wall in the cinema room, all very neatly done. The the CU fed each socket with thick cable. The whole cost was about £1500, it did improve the dynamics, lowered the noise floor, added real weight and a sense of scale. As I left the old ring main in place I could swap and listen to before and after. Also interesting that I did get small amount of mains hum if I did part on the ring and part on the 'new'. There was no additional earth, I guess the new was simply better earthed. I also found the system was consistently good and no longer seemed to have an 'off day'

If your house is new it may not keep as bigger benefits. I do think moving from ring mains to individual equal length lines with a dedicated CU may well be worthwhile though. My suspicion is its about getting very good and equal earthing and low impedance.
 
I have DC on my mains in my 21 year old house. I had my electrics tested when someone came in to do another job and confirmed all was well apart from that. This causes the transformers in my power amps to buzz quite loudly. I had a new CU installed in the garage and 10mm cable run up to the cinema room (which is directly above the garage) in four spurs to unswitched sockets. Didn't make a blind bit of difference.

What did work for me is this: Combined module Soft Start (inrush current limiter) & DC Blocker (trap, filter) – assembled in case | ATL Audio Ltd., which is also a DC filter.

Previous to that I'd tried mains conditioners, although nothing as fancy as the ISOtek, and a sine wave UPS but that didn't work either.

If your problem is DC then I would highly recommend the ATL stuff.
 
To all who have taken an interest in my question of mains conditioners, and those who have replied, very many thanks. It is still an ongoing situation.
 
I have had the isotek Aquarius and Polaris, once plugged in there is a noticeable difference with the lower noise floor but after a while its obvious that something is missing with the sound, TBH I actually prefer the mains to be plugged straight from the wall with no conditioner, a mains regenerator would be the logical answer but in my system it’s well over the top.
 
I purchased an IsoTek Aquarius last year as I was getting a lot of noise on my mains during the day. It was the best single mains improvement device I have ever bought for my hi fi.

i created quite a discussion on here though with people saying things like this were all snake oil.
 
I’ve used Isotek kit in the past, when I was living in a flat. I was getting some horrible mains interference from somewhere, but the conditioner, can’t recall which, really cleaned-up the mess.

Nowadays, I use Olson Sounds Fantastic strips. They’re a good compromise, especially if you have reasonably noise-free mains, and are well built. The in-band 10A fuse is perhaps the only weak point, but it’s there for a reason. Practical enough and well made and a darn sight cheaper than anything from Russ Andrews, if you buy into his snake oil ...
 
I’ve used Isotek kit in the past, when I was living in a flat. I was getting some horrible mains interference from somewhere, but the conditioner, can’t recall which, really cleaned-up the mess.

Nowadays, I use Olson Sounds Fantastic strips. They’re a good compromise, especially if you have reasonably noise-free mains, and are well built. The in-band 10A fuse is perhaps the only weak point, but it’s there for a reason. Practical enough and well made and a darn sight cheaper than anything from Russ Andrews, if you buy into his snake oil ...
I wouldn’t say everything Russ Andrews sells is snake oil. A lot is though. This link takes you to my original post when I first asked advice. It makes for fun reading.
 
I gave up experimenting with mains conditioners 10 years ago, they can do some good things with noisy digital sources but always lost dynamics and overall preferred without. Moving to a well constructed mains supply can provide real benefits but expensive extensions I’m very very doubtful of

If you want a good mains extension use Olson as they are hard wired and use real sockets

if you can install a seperate CU direct from the incoming mains and feed each fuse to a single socket with over spec cable (eg 6 or 10A) this will reduce impedence and provide very worthwhile gains. I’m a big fan of improving mains but it’s more about avoiding weak earthing and high impedence than filtering

A full solution can be affordable - less than £1k all done £600 on an extension is not a wise investment imo
Yep, pretty much my experience too. I originally bought a couple of IsoTek isolation transformers, one for power amp's and another for lower current components. Both were/are very well made but neither made any noticeable difference at all.

Then I bought a PurePower 2000i which is big, heavy and expensive (though the price I paid for mine was less than half the £4,595 that the latest Gold series costs) and its effects, I gradually came to realise, were/are subtly deleterious to dynamics, purity, transparency and imaging. Its cooling fan was noisy too, though I managed to cure that with a factory-supplied mod (installed by my dealer) that lowered the voltage of its power supply and thus the speed of the fans. The unit runs a degree or two higher than with the original psu, but not seriously so.

Component by component, I stopped using it and (with a series of low cost tweaks to other aspects of the system) my system's better for having done so. I (now) use Bryston amplification and that company advises against power conditioners, though they do make their own quite extensive range of outboard isolation transformers which they claim do enhance dynamic range. They're not available in the UK (perhaps because the importers, PMC, have a healthy scepticism for such things) but, even if they were, I wouldn't bother with one. If they're so good, they should be optional substitutes for those built into the components as standard.

With a view to selling the PurePower, I tried to get a replacement set of batteries but it was such a hassle (I couldn't even get a price from the dealer) that eventually I gave up.

I can't claim that, amongst the many available, there isn't a power conditioner out there that does yield benefits, only that I've never heard one that does, either at home or at shows (systems using an IsoTek isolator never sounded particularly special to my ears). So, if you are contemplating buying a power conditioner or an isolation transformer, try it at home before spending what could well be quite a large sum of money. As far as I'm concerned, they're in the same territory as cables. Some of them may do what they claim but most, I suspect, don't.
 
OK, not everything that Russ Andrews is snake oil, but some of it certainly is, in my experience. I think that it’s generally over priced though.
 
OK, not everything that Russ Andrews is snake oil, but some of it certainly is, in my experience. I think that it’s generally over priced though.

Most is overpriced and a lot of bandwagon waste of money and time. Anti vibration can be solved with things like Sorbothen, wool felt and so on. I bought a good linear power supply to replace a wall adapter that was noisy for £60 form China, its boxed with a IEC connector and has a decent sized transformer. If you want to be pedantic you could order some higher quality Nichicon or other capacitors for anther £20-30 then you've got a really good LPS
 

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