AudioQuest Niagara 3000 AC power conditioner Fred Kaplan August 2021

Fred Kaplan wrote about the AudioQuest Niagara 3000 in August 2021 (Vol.44 No.8):

I’ve long felt no need for a power conditioner. When we moved to our current house, back in 1995, on the advice of a fellow audiophile I had an electrician install hospital-grade outlets, wired to a discrete 20-amp circuit for all my audio gear. It was the most cost-effective improvement to my system that I’ve ever made, and I would advise anyone to take this step before doing anything else to treat your AC power.

Over the years, I’ve tried a few devices to cleanse the dirt that ConEd was zapping into my house. One (I forget the brand) did little more than compress dynamics. Another (Monster Cable’s voltage regulator) was a great surge protector but did almost nothing to perk up the sound. The Bybee Signature Power Purifier smoothed out some high-frequency fuzziness but, as I bought better amps and preamps, the effects wrought by the Bybee steadily diminished. In the past year, I’ve installed solar panels on the roof (not for sonic reasons) and hooked up all my audio electronics to AudioQuest’s Hurricane power cords (to surprisingly excellent effect). So, I figured, why spend thousands of dollars more to condition my power any further?

Then I read Tom Gibbs’s review of AudioQuest’s Niagara 3000 Low-Z Power/Noise-Dissipation System (footnote 1) in this past January’s issue, and, despite the hefty price tag ($2995, cheaper than some competitors, but still), I was intrigued. I asked to audition a unit. I wound up buying it.

I won’t repeat Tom’s able summary of the Niagara’s features, design goals, and technical innovations. Instead, I’ll describe what I heard before and after its installation. But first, a clarification: When AudioQuest’s designer, Garth Powell, describes the 3000 as a “noise-dissipation system,” he doesn’t mean noise in the obvious sense. You may think that there’s no noise in your components, wiring, or electrical grounds because you don’t hear hum, distortion, static, etc. The noise that the Niagara dissipates is something that you don’t hear—not until it’s not there, at which point you notice its absence. In its absence, you hear—or, anyway, I heard—more detail, more rhythmic drive, more palpable images (on voices and instruments), more air (if it’s captured in the recording), more tuneful bass, and more extended highs. Much of this is the byproduct of a quieter—a dead quiet—backdrop to everything your stereo is trying to retrieve from the grooves or bits of the spinning records or discs.

On “Amelia,” from Joni Mitchell’s Hejira (LP, Asylum/Rhino), the twangy guitar strums flicker like lightning bolts, the chimes of the vibraphone shimmer and glow, and Joni’s voice is right there, her lips almost visible, her subtlest modulations clearly articulated. On the opening and title tracks of the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra’s The Thompson Fields (CD, ArtistShare), every instrument is distinctly placed, blown, plucked, strummed—whatever activity makes the thing played by a living, breathing musician—and they all seem to share the same acoustic space.

I’ve made similar observations in reviews of various preamps, amps, and speakers over the years, but what the Niagara 3000 adds to the picture is the seamlessness of these effects—the closer approximation to in-the-flesh music, heard whole—from top to bottom (low notes to high notes and everything in between), side to side (left channel to right), and front to back (the pinch-me illusion of soundstage depth). Many components, including some power conditioners I’ve heard, highlight one piece of this picture (silky highs or growly lows or pinpoint imagery), but, if the rest of your system is up to the task, the Niagara’s cleansing job lets you hear and see it all.

After noticing this natural seamlessness in track after track, I reread an essay on AudioQuest’s website, “Redefining the Science of Power Conditioning,” and noted this passage:

It’s not enough to reduce AC line noise and its associated distortions at just one octave, thus leaving vulnerable the adjacent octaves and octave partials to noise, resonant peaking, or insufficient noise reduction. Consistency is key. We should never accept superior resolution in one octave, only to suffer from masking effects a half-octave away and ringing artifacts two octaves from there.

According to the essay, the Niagara 3000’s Level-X Linear Noise-Dissipation Technology filters noise across “more than 21 octaves … with linear response, optimized for varying line and load impedance.”

That’s what I’m hearing: a linear response—a seamless absence of noise—across the frequency spectrum. A clear tone with a noisy overtone (or, worse, the other way around) can disrupt the thrust, rhythm, and clarity of recorded music. It can disrupt music’s beauty (in music that strives for beauty, and attains it) and above all its realism.

Am I getting carried away? Did I start hearing more detail, more coherence, and so forth, because I was expecting to hear it—when, in fact, I’d been hearing these things all along, even before plugging all my components’ power cords into this magical box?

It was possible. So, a few months after installing the Niagara 3000 and getting used to what it does, I played “Amelia,” unplugged my Simaudio Moon 740P preamp from the box, plugged the cord back into the wall socket, and played “Amelia” again. All the other components—turntable, phono preamp, power amp, and CD player—were still plugged into the Niagara. The difference was immediately clear and not subtle. The guitar strums and vibraphone shimmers were still distinct and lively, but they didn’t snap or glow in quite the same way, nor was Joni’s voice quite so embodied.

Then I unplugged the cord from my Simaudio Moon 860A power amp, plugged it into the wall socket, and played “Amelia” again. The snap and glow diminished another notch, with one further lapse: The music was less dynamic, less dancing-in-your-head exciting.

The amp had been plugged into one of the Niagara’s two sockets meant for power amplifiers. (There are two such sockets, out of seven in all, to accommodate mono amplifiers.) Both sockets feature a “Transient Power Correction Circuit,” which can instantaneously release a reservoir of current exceeding 55 amps peak for those current-starved moments in a piece of music. These moments can come with loud orchestral passages or a hard-strummed guitar. With an amp—or, in this case, a power conditioner—that’s capable of supplying that quick surge of power, the strum can startle you, make you jump or blink your eyes. With the amp plugged into this circuit, that’s what happened; with the amp plugged into the wall, not so much.

I did not compare the Niagara 3000 with the AudioQuest Niagara 7000 or with other power-improvement devices that the magazine has favorably reviewed, such as the PS Audio Power Plant 20 AC Regenerator, the Shunyata Research Everest 8000, the Audience Adept Response aR12-TS, or the AC Nexus Advanced Power Distribution & Ground Enhancement System. All of those systems are more expensive than the Niagara 3000, and most of them work on different principles, even if the goal is the same (more or less). Those devices may do the job even better; I don’t know.

What I do know—what I have learned from this experience, with a conditioner that’s in my budget ballpark—is that AC power is a nightmare, grounding is a nightmare, noise from anything and everything that’s plugged into a socket is a nightmare. The Niagara 3000 or any of these other devices won’t make your stereo system better than it already is, but to make it sound as good as it’s capable of sounding, you probably need something that clears out the electronic gremlins, unless your power is already pristine, which isn’t likely.—Fred Kaplan

Footnote 1: AudioQuest, 2621 White Rd., Irvine, CA 92614. Tel: (949) 790-6000. Web: audioquest.com.

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COMPANY INFO

AudioQuest

2621 White Rd.

Irvine, CA 92614

(949) 790-6000

audioquest.com

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Fred Kaplan August 2021
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