I don’t consider myself to be an audiophile, but friends and associates who know about my home theater hobby, and have an understanding of the time and money invested; think I’m an Audio-Nut, which actually may be more accurate.

Upgrading my system has taken a few major leaps in the last couple of years, one of which included the 950. All of these changes benefited the listening and viewing pleasure in different and sometimes unexpected ways. Most of the changes had one significant dependency in common, power.

Now, I have never been an advocate of power conditioners, hospital grade outlets or super expensive power cables. I considered these types of products mere hype. I just thought if it got juice, you were set. Well no more.

Here is what happened. After all the various additions to the MeanGene Home Theater I found that I could not play DVD’s anywhere near 0 dB. (Zeroed with 950 test tone @ 76 dB SPL) The 15A house circuit breaker providing all the power for my rack would trip leaving me in the silent darkness. This wasn’t a show stopper as I rarely play anything at that SPL (I measured over 115 dB once with ear plugs). But on the occasion where the movie/music demanded it, I didn’t want to be left in the dark. So I decided to upgrade the electrical system in my house. I had the electrician come by and add two 20A dedicated circuits to the home theater room. While he was there he found that some of the breakers were weak and some connections were a little loose with a bit of green corrosion on the wire ends. We replaced all of the breakers in the panel and made sure everything was clean and tight.

My expectation would be that I would have the same sound quality without a breaker tripping during high demands on the system (2000+ watts). The revelation was that the sound quality did improve, and very noticeably.

The improvement in sound in most noticeable in the lower frequencies. The bass is much stronger with greater detail. It sounds like the subs and woofers have more control over their voice coils. For example, I have two 15” sub woofers that are currently using drivers that are lacking (replacements are on the way). During high excursion they would start to blubber or loose control. I had thought that it was exclusively a driver problem, but the change with 20A for the amplifier circuit gave these meager devices a clear improvement. They are far less susceptible to the control problem now. Drum beats are more accurate and sharper then before.

I have wondered to myself about some of the Home Theater hype that is out there, will I actually hear the difference or is this just eye candy. Well I can tell you now that giving good power to your devices, if it’s not already there, WILL provide a positive audio difference in your system. It was a revelation to me.